C*nty Council

When will the fucking county council stop tearing up our roads?

As regular readers will, no doubt, be aware, I live in Ballyfuck, which is down a bog road with grass growing up the middle in the arse-end of nowhere. It has a church, a school, a shop, and several pubs. All within walking distance.

My commute to work is lengthy and not without interest. It takes me over mountains and hump-backed bridges, past farmyards plastered in inches of cow scutter and pubs in the middle of forests that I must visit for a few pints before the drink-driving laws cause them to close. Occasionally my travel time is increased by a herd of cows being brought for milking, suicidal pigeons and fucking crows literally throwing themselves at my front bumper, stoned pheasants JUST STANDING THERE in the middle of the road and, on one occasion, a deer with its white arse turned towards me in a gesture of defiance, the fucker. It’s wonderful and the rising petrol costs only detract from it slightly.

Lately, however, the county council have been fucking it up. Recently they decided to tear up the main street of another village which I pass through on my way to work. This resulted in my having to take a small detour. This went on for so long that I had almost forgotten the place existed.

This week, they are working on a stretch of road near that village, which I now can no longer get into from Ballyfuck direction. To get there, I must now take a long detour.

I’ve started to explore the network of “roads that aren’t even roads if you look at them on a map” in order to reach my destination. Some of these work out extremely well, but they rely on a sharp sense of direction, as there are, inevitably, no signposts. These, I believe, are adorning the walls of some old-fashioned pubs.

The trouble with these roads, though, is I run a real risk of being stuck behind a big tractor pulling a trailer load of silage or an evil-smelling shit spreader. Or sometimes I take a wrong turn at a - typically unsignposted - junction and drive down a narrow public road which bizarrely tapers off into someone’s private driveway and I have to do a hasty turn as the occupants of the house gaze in bewilderment from the front windows. Only yesterday was I chased half a mile (thank god for being encased in a metal thing on wheels) by an irate, unmuzzled Rottweiler, and a Jack Russell with a nasty habit of nipping at my wheels.

I suppose it still makes for an interesting journey. And I got home in one piece.

Only to find that the council are tearing up Ballyfuck’s main street for the third time in as many months and there is now a crater six feet deep which is full of men in hi-vis vests drinking tea.

And my fucking water is cut off. Again.

If the wider civil service could transfer to county councils (we can’t) I would gladly do so and attempt to fuck things up for them (just ahead of transferring back to the Department), like putting dead pigeons (see above) in their water tanks, digging a big hole in the county engineer’s parking spot and putting “DIVERSION” signs and traffic cones in the corridors of power.

That would fix ‘em, the bastards.