Stuck in a pot hole and I
can’t get out of it
21.11.07
You know I realise I’m
probably living in the wrong county for this, but I’ve
come to the conclusion recently that I really don’t like
potholes.
And I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to come to
this conclusion, maybe it’s been in the back of my mind
for some time now, but it finally hit me last week.
That was of course after I’d hit one of the damn things
on the way back from work one night.
Of course the pothole in question has filled itself with
water and in the dark had cleverly disguised itself as a
part of the road.
That meant that I didn’t see it until I had absolutely
walloped it causing a spray of muddy water to fly over
the windscreen and of course nearly shaking every bone
in my body.
But I knew there would be worse than that and sure
enough I soon discovered that thanks to this pothole I
had a puncture. |
 |
I guess when you live in a
county with as many potholes as we have, it is almost
part of everyday motoring.
The thing is I still hate doing it. And it’s not even
the unloosening of nuts that somebody has put on with a
pneumatic gun obviously thinking that nobody will ever
have to take this thing off again, that bothers me. It’s
not even the footering with a tiny jack.
It’s more the fact that for me, changing a tyre usually
means an operation as large as moving house.
You see my philosophy is that if there is a large boot
in a car, it is valuable storage space that shouldn’t
really be wasted.
So it’s usual to find that the boot of my car is filled
with footballs, training cones and bibs, football boots
and wet suits and well all sorts of junk that would just
take me too much effort and bother to move in and out of
the car every time I need it in a week.
Leaving them all in the boot does have its drawbacks,
like the fact that the inside of my car does now smell
like an old sock, but even that is still better than how
it used to smell when I bought it, since the previous
owner had smoked and had left behind that nasty reek for
me to try to deal with.
The down side of storing all the junk in the car is
however that in a situation where you might have to
change a tyre, it can take ten minutes before you get
all the junk out and get what you need.
I was thinking about that last week as I tried to shove
over the footballs and stuff on the back seat (that’s
useful storage space too) to make room for the stuff
from the boot and I wondered is it why so many of the
guys I know now seem to have a spare tyre conveniently
stored under their t-shirt.
I also began to think about all the road works we get in
this county at this time of the year every year and
began to wonder if there might be a market for a
calendar for council officials dealing with road works
that shows there are actually months in the year other
than October-December.
In fact I began to wonder where they are for the rest of
the year and have come to the conclusion that for the
first nine months of the year these guys are busy not
fixing roads or filling potholes, they are away off
somewhere making Christmas decorations and other
Christmassy junk. |
Think about it folks. As
soon as it gets to that time of the year when the
Christmas stuff starts to appear, you are almost
guaranteed that the big road works will start.
So when they say Christmas is getting earlier every year
all of a sudden I’ve begun to wonder if this would be
such a bad thing?
In the meantime I was left to fix my puncture and ring
the council to complain about that huge crater of a
pothole that wrecked my wheel.
In fairness, they said they had been told about it by
other motorists too and it was now a top priority.
“We’ve sent out four men with shovels...and they’re all
looking into it... |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
|
