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Red, yellow, green...

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We’re now firmly into that awkward time of year when councils desperately try and patch up our crumbling roads before the tourists arrive for summer.

Got to look our best after all! What does it matter if a bunch of surly locals get inconvenienced massively? (I didn’t mean you madam – you look jolly nice in those wellies, and they go ever so well with the flat cap and pipe.)

This does seem to happen every year, and for once I’m not being paranoid (although aliens are definitely living in my shed, and the tin foil helmet isn’t blocking their transmissions telling me to eat all the chocolate Hob-Nobs in England).

We have reached the latter stages of a truly absurd bit of money saving. It seems the powers that be are now so cash-strapped, that waiting until AFTER the road surfaces have turned into something resembling footage from the moon landings before attempting repair is the norm. How big do pot holes have to be before they get filled? If I can lie down in it, is that big enough to warrant attention?

I’ve driven along roads where recently patched areas are the only thing left, the surrounding original surface having crumbled away in shame, leaving random brooding black oblongs to absorb the light, like that thing out of 2001: A Surface Odyssey.

The next stage seems to have been carried out regularly this season locally – take a road, and randomly resurface some lengths of it, seeming not basing it on which bit is worst, even though any passing motorist could tell you it was all filling-rattlingly bad and needed doing. A few months later, do some other bits too.

It’s also vital that badly phased traffic lights are installed for the duration. These work best if set on a stupidly short period of green, taking absolutely no account of the fact that traffic often flows more in one direction than the other, depending on the time of day. I’m sure there’s some kind of challenge to see who can infuriate motorists the most. I swear (quite a lot) I’ve sat in a queue for 15 minutes inching imperceptibly forwards, only to finally make it to the lights and find there is no-one waiting to come the other way. I propose that those in charge be made to stand in the front row of a Justin Beiber concert for every minute of commuters’ lives wasted. Harsh, but fair.

The other brilliant jape is to make sure the lights conk out just after all the crew have left for the day. Hilarious.

Then the next competition begins. Who can dig up the new surface first? And don’t get me started on the fact that the people that dig the hole, do whatever it is that needs doing, fill it, tarmac it, and then remove the signage, all seemingly work for different species and have no common method of communication.

Have a good, mostly green, weekend.

If you can.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday 15th June 2012. This is the unedited version - you can view the printed/online version here: where it was retitled 'Just how large do potholes have to be?' by their sub-editors, which seems to be a fairly poor effort, as they just nicked a bit of provocative text out of the article. Still, my original title was pretty crap too. It'd be grand to see some comments, so please go there and leave one. A nice one, if you like. Or a bad one. It's a democracy, after all.)

(The continuing CD A-Z continues to continue, and we're still on the letter J - currently Billy Joel's "River Of Dreams".)
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