Notes From the Hard Shoulder - James May [3]
So here's a tip. If you open the fridge tonight and find that it contains, like mine, a pork chop, some potatoes and a sprig of broccoli, have pork chop with potatoes and broccoli for dinner.
BRITAIN'S SURFACE INDUSTRY FAILS TO DELIVER
Last year, the main road that runs perpendicular to the little road I live on was resurfaced. And I know what you're expecting me to say next.
That it's now worse than it ever was, is covered in nasty grit that destroys underseal, and has already been dug up by the GPO to lay some new telephone cables. But no. This was by far the most professional, efficient and well-managed civil engineering project I've ever witnessed at close quarters.
The work began at around 10 o'clock one night, when all the traffic had died down. The whole road was closed, and an army of stout men turned up with a gigantic fire-belching engine, a sort of mechanical version of that Norwegian cheese slicer, the one that you use to put parmesan shavings on the top of your salad if people are coming round for dinner.
This thing, moving at a speed so imperceptible that in the time it took me to drink three pints and have a game of darts it had travelled only about 30 yards, removed exactly three inches from the top of the road surface while somehow avoiding the drains and manhole covers. Once the pub had shut, and because I had no one left to talk to, I went to watch the miracle unfold and have a ride on the iron horse.
The next morning, just before the rush-hour started, the bollards, the security tape, the cheese slicer and the workers' tea tent thing were all removed and the road was opened again. It wasn't very good, because each manhole cover now assumed the proportions of Ayers Rock and the grooves left by the skimming machine tended to steer one's motorcycle into the path of oncoming traffic. But it was open.
The next night, it was closed again. Now another roaring inferno worthy of Hieronymus Bosch himself turned up to lay the new surface, inching along the street and dispensing the gleaming, sweet-smelling blacktop of hope in its wake. By morning it was finished, and this little corner of UK PLC was back in business, thanks largely to some blokes from Poland.
And the results were – and there really is no other word for this – perfect. People were on their hands and knees at the kerb examining the road and searching vainly for flaws. Small children were riding up and down on bicycles, marvelling at its smoothness. People in shops could be heard saying, 'Have you driven on the new road yet?' There had not been such a collective sense of wonderment since the invention of radio.
Even now, a year on, I can find only two small patches that have been disturbed, and these have been mended almost invisibly. It really is a pleasure to arrive home by car.
So can someone explain the appalling Horlicks that's been made of the side road running parallel to mine? It was closed and excavated for the purposes of installing a new water main, although for the most part it was simply closed. The job is now complete, and in fairness the contractor has made good the road, in the sense that I don't actually fall down a hole when I'm making my way home from the pub at night. But, God in heaven, it's unsightly. The new tarmac is the wrong colour, the wrong texture, and it isn't flush with the old stuff.
How can I portray the sheer horror of these road repairs? Let me put it this way. If one of the perfectly laid green tiles from my bathroom floor was broken, this lot would come around, affix a slightly smaller brown tile of half the thickness, fill in the gaps with the wrong colour grout and then stand back and say, 'Yep, that looks pretty good.'
It's not even an isolated case. Since noting this, I have been walking around with my head bowed, ignoring the cheery greetings of my neighbours, totally absorbed in studying the road surface. Everywhere I look it's a patchwork of cack-handed repairs completed so shoddily that it's