Roads, fires and blockages

So we had a fire in Kidderminster on Sunday which caused a problem for Tav getting to the Glades reading about the route and thinking about it he's correct. With the Coventry Street end of Bromsgrove Street closed you have zero legal access to the Glades, the open car-park, the Youth Centre, delivery to the back of some of the stores; all closed off.

So what you might think, one-way systems exist everywhere. Except Bromsgrove Street isn't one-way it's two-way. The two-way system is essentially capped at either end by Coventry Street and the Glades, but you can turn left out of the Glades onto Prospect Hill which joins Bromsgrove Street and that's one-way.

Again so what that's effectively the same thing, well take a look at the map and see what else gets closed off. Despite the fact you can get around any blockage by entering from the other side of town that entire section of road system is cut off due to the one-way system.

As happens this led to a discussion about how the town is split, you can't get from the Weavers Wharf/Bull Ring side to the Tesco/New Street side by car except by looping around the whole town. Fine if like me you tend to pick things up piecemeal; lousy for bulk shoppers or combination bulk shoppers/browsers.


After the fire (Monday) the usual people were called in to do the boarding-up. They came, started, and almost finished when a fire engine pulled up. Now this isn't the old police joke of turning up 24-hours late to a call, oh no, they'd come to put out a fire in the building. Yep it was on fire again, so all the boarding had to come back down to allow access to the fire-crew. Anyone know the Health and Safety stance on the boarding up of buildings on fire? So either this was a separate fire that got started or a hot-spot reignited. Now in the case of the former how did it start and in the case of the latter who released the building originally?


On the subject of blockages, driving through Bridge Street I came to a halt next tot he pedestrian crossing. The gap between the car in front and the end of the crossing wasn't large enough for me to fit without straddling it, so I stopped before it. The car moved and the gap became large enough, I moved forward; the car behind me also moves forward right behind me. The lights change and the people can't cross as the car behind me is blocking the crossing. They edge round as the lights beep, we all move forward about two cars and the lights behind me change again (have I mentioned that the timing is seriously frigged on these things)

Take two - I heading for a right-hand turn into a junction that has its own slip-road. There's a low van waiting at the junction to turn right. Nothing coming at me so normally I'd slow down and let him cross in front of me, except I've a van behind me so he wouldn't have time to pull out. As I'm pulling across him to turn, two people and a dog decide to cross the road behind him, his side to mine.

Now I can't complete my turn because the pedestrians are on the road (oh and the van that would have stopped him pulling out decided to follow me), but where have they gone? I pull forward a touch and see them standing hidden behind this low van waiting for me to turn, except they're standing behind the van and the damn dog is on its leash a third of the way across the lane I want.

I look at them, they look at me, not a thought of the dog seems to cross their minds and he even waves me across. So I pull a wide right and manage to get past the dog.

I've said it before and I'm sure I'll be saying it again - I just don't get some people.


Oh and an update from Jim on his car stereo turns out the reason it wasn't playing MP3 CDs was because it doesn't play MP3 CDs. The sticker saying it did was put on by default at the factory. So a round of applause there.