NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/alt/peeves/12348

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-21 | 4.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!edcastle!dcs.ed.ac.uk!ed.ac.uk!Not_Al_Crawford
From: [e-mail] (Not Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Re: DAGADAGADAGADAGADAGA...
Keywords: i said it's half past eleven
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 21 Jul 92 10:48:22 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Not Al Crawford)
Organization: Penicuik People's Revolutionary Sheepdog Liberation Front
Lines: 79

And lo, [e-mail] (Alexander Vrchoticky) spake unto the masses saying:
>
> peeve:          digging    the        sidewalk      frigging
>         they're         up     damned          with          jackhammers.

Yes, I can really relate to this.

Those readers of this newsgroup whose memories stretch back more than a
couple of weeks might remember me peeving about the manner in which the
council, three weeks or so ago, came along and dug up all the kerbstones on
the pavement outside my house. They then waited a day, put them all back
again, and went away.

What I *didn't* say at the time was that they didn't finish the work. They
certainly put the kerbstones back, but managed to leave a strip of
something approximately midway in consistency between rubble and some of
the less pleasant trenches in the Somme and about a foot wide right along
the road.

There was, it must be said, a very good reason for this. The reason
was...Trades. Now in less civilised parts of the world, all your usual
trades (plumbers, joiners, people who dig up kerbstones, bakers etc) are on
call pretty much all year round. These heathen savages actually stagger
their holidays, so the chances are that you will at any one time be able to
find a plumber.

Not so in this neck of the woods. Trades is seemingly a holdover from the
Victorian era, when the aristocracy condescended to let the plebs actually
go on holiday providing that they only went during a particular two weeks
of the year, so as not to inconvenience the aristocracy too much. So, with
much tugging of forelocks etc, all the tradesmen shuffled off and caught
the train to some cosy little seaside resort or, if they were really
unlucky, to Butlins (a source of plentiful peeves that I'd be only to
willing to peeve about were it not for the mental block that the trauma of
staying at Butlins once in my childhood caused).

Now despite the fact that this is now the last decade of the twentieth
century, and that everyone else on the planet seems to have reasonably
flexible working hours, the phenomenon of Trades persists. For two weeks of
the year, you can't get a plumber or a joiner anywhere and the pavements
get left looking like they'd be at home in one of the seedier parts of
Beirut.

Quite why this is, I don't know. There is now no reason whatsoever that
tradesmen have to all go on holiday at the same time. Sure, they still all
go to the same places (only these days its some resort in Spain that's
*exactly* like the UK except hotter) but there's no reason that they all
have to go at once. Maybe it's something to do with those straw donkeys
only being available in the shops there at certain times of year, I dunno.

My own theory is that many of them *don't* go on holiday but are (secretly)
open for business as usual. So that when you do 'phone them they can make
that little backwards-whistling noise and go "Well, guv, ordinarily it'd be
no problem, but it's *Trades* see, so I'll have to charge you five times
the usual rate."

Now the same applies to men who dig up pavements, apparently. They've been
sitting in their yellow van somewhere waiting for trades to end, and now
they're back. With a vengeance. Far from repairing the havoc they've
already wrought, they've dug up the entire pavement, leaving the street
looking like one of the more exciting suburbs of Sarajevo (well, *more*
like that than usual, anyway). And the really peeving bit is that the
monster machine they used to do it (this work requiring too much noise and
damage for mere jackhammers) not only ripped up the entire pavement but
half my garden path. About 30 houses down this side of the street, every
one with a garden path, and they're all intact except mine, which looks
like someone's used a runway cratering bomb on it.

Now it's not a big garden, I know, and the weather here does make keeping
it reasonably tidy and keeping the grass cut rather difficult, but it
certainly doesn't help when the council come along and blow your path up.

Oh, and to top it all, the noise and vibration caused by the machine was
such that the kitchen cupboards are now in serious danger of falling off
the wall.

--
        Not Al Crawford - [e-mail]
     "The water shines/A sheepdog skips across the face/A dozen times"