Roads… where we’re going we don’t need roads!

We all know the quote and we all know the film. I wish we didn’t need roads around our way though because then I wouldn’t be wide awake at 3 am writing this.

We were told some weeks back that the road where I live was to have repairs for two days. The road was supposed to be closed for that period but things could change because of the weather. It never went ahead but then three weeks later it was scheduled again for 18th and 19th March. A couple of days ago I noticed a letter on top of the communal postbox. It was not addressed to anyone in particular, just The Residents, and I was so gobsmacked when I read this I could not believe it.

Covid has changed everyone’s life in a lot of ways but laying new road during the middle of a night ina residential area? No way! Yes way! Apparently the council had complaints about the road closure during the day because it would prevent people getting to the jab centre for their vaccination. This is rot because it is on a paralell road to ours which can be accessed without going up our road. Due to these complaints, we were told in this letter that no one spotted earlier, the work was going to be done on the same dates but between the hours of 8 pm and 6 am. I have a front ground floor flat so it is going on less than six feet from my living room and bedroom. I couldn’t believe that this would be allowed but it has been. I don’t have to see it to believe it – I can hear it.

I took today – I mean Friday – off work as holiday because I got no sleep Thursday night and this is Take 2. They have a machine that seems to break up old road surface and spits it into a tipper truck, a machine for laying new tarmac and a steamroller as well as jackhammers. I already have trouble sleeping, with a trip to a sleep clinic within the next couple of weeks, so there is no chance tonight. I don’t know which one it is but one of the machines makes the whole flat vibrate when it goes past. Rip Van Winkle would not be able to sleep tonight.

Still it has forced me to find something to do and I have written 2,300 words of the novel so far this morning. Now almost at 87,000.

Need to take a break though because the noise is giving me a headache on a Richter Scale of 10. I may just put on a bit of Sherlock. I have caught a few Jeremy Brett episodes on ITV4 recently and I have the box set on DVD.

“when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Even Sherlock would have been hard pushed to work out why this is going on? This early morning’s episode ‘The Sound of the Jackhammer Drills’.

Ta Mac!