Gold paint, CCTV, skate-park, and a few other things including cigarettes

Ah Saturday; I woke to sunshine, got out of bed to cloud, and dressed to the sound of rain.

Spotting a gap I popped down to Stourport. A pavement is now able to be used on the bridge meaning I could get a close-up view of the new paint-job. It is gold, just not a very shiny gold which means from a distance it just looks beige. It does look good close-up though.


Wandering through I was surprised at how busy the town was seeing as it was both wet and a cup match was scheduled for the afternoon. I took note of three CCTV cameras up in the town; one on the side of Beards/Eurotronics pointing down High Street, one at the other end on the High Street, Lickhill Road triangle also appearing to point down High Street. Finally the one at the Lion Hill end of York Street pointing down, well, York Street.

So unless the Beards one can rotate Bridge Street is not yet covered, and therefore neither is the skate-park.

With that possibility in mind I stood next to the skate site and looked up to Bridge Street, with a 4x/4x zoom and a 7.1MPixel camera I can make out the CCTV camera; so in theory it could be covering that area...just.


Speaking of the skate-park they've really cracked the whip. You might recall last time we had three small slabs, one large one, and a ditch. Well they've added two smaller concrete squares as off-shoots to the large one. Why this wasn't done as part of the larger square... well a regular framework is much easier to build and then you only need three balks for any offshoots. Of course it means that these aren't bonded to the larger piece and any subsidence means that they'll be the first to crack off. But hey who cares; anyway if they keep up this fast-paced high-octane rate I'm sure it'll be ready by the middle of June.

Photos to be uploaded to the standard place when I get around to it.


After concluding my trip I headed back for some lunch then headed out to Kidderminster, due to the time and assuming it'd be a ghost town I headed down the main drag and got stopped at the roadwork lights next to... before the railway bridge next to the pub that kept changing it's name every other month; anyway these lights were definitely needed as they'd dug a trench across one lane, of course they'd then filled it back up again so um... The cynical part of me, which along with the paranoid part makes up most of me, says that the work crew finished on Friday night and the traffic light crew don't start until Monday morning.

Getting in was fine, but the queue I passed trying to get out was terrible; I resolved to remember to leave via a different route.

The open car-park was quietish, except for my swearing at the ticket dispenser which didn't like any of the 10p coins I had. One hour for 60p means I normally drop in three 20p's, but I had a build-up of 50's and 10's. Five attempted coins later I poinked out the 50p and rummaged for 20's instead.

In the interests of giving people heart-attacks a speaker has been set high up next to the ticket machine dispensing sage advice every so often. I'll paraphrase - 'Police warning. Please remember to remove any sat-nav devices and valuables from your car' or, and call me stupid, you could have a police officer or traffic warden patrolling around the car-park... nah, I am being stupid.

The town was surprisingly busy mostly kids, by which I mean young teens. Spotted a CCTV camera on the corner of TopShop, prodded memories suggest it's been there a while, but <shrugs>

Remembering the queue I headed back by the sacred Wilden Road (because it's so holey) at the end of which was a roadwork sign. Really bloody useful as it neglected to inform me which way the works were; they were in the direction I was going in and, as Don has already commented, set-up by an idiot. The lights weren't up fortunately, but I could see how it would have been. Yep there are three lanes, yep the middle lane can easily take the place of the closed one, yep let's set-up some traffic lights.


Sunday was a wash-out so I stayed in and watched the second season of "Dead Like Me" on DVD. They've still got the chaptering gapped poorly and each disc now starts with the standard 'We think you're a criminal' intro, which was nicely skippable unlike the 'We still think you're a criminal' text page that seems to stay up so long I could've translated it into hieroglyphs and carved them onto the wall. The series itself was fun, but lacked a finish. Saying that I do hope they make and release a third.


Traffic was not good this morning, rain bringing out more vehicles oh and we had a minor shunt on the Dunley Road. Nicely it was just before the Areley Common junction, which combined with the fact that the car behind the crash was too close and couldn't pull around it, meant that all the traffic in Areley Common could actually get out. I know I bemoan the people who leave enough room to fit a double-decker bus between themselves and the stationary car in front of them, but you should at least leave enough room so you get get past them if necessary.


A bit about cigarettes. Some bods popped up early on the BBC in an attempt to get/prevent a complete smoking ban in cars. They might cause accidents as they're a distraction to driving; like mobiles. The anti-bod pointed out that laws were already in place regarding driving without due care and attention, to which pro-bod agreed and then used the mobile amendments as a argument for specific bans. How long have I been saying this? How many times have I said that the mobile laws will get used as precedent? How many times have I pointed out the insanity of banning mobiles specifically, but hey it's fine for anyone to stick a tube of something in their mouth and set fire to it? Ack I'm expecting politics to follow common-sense rules, silly me.