Sunday 30 October 2005

Sea Front and Engines Running

On Saturday I drove along the sea front. I know I always drive along the sea front but on Saturday I noticed that the waves were starting to come over the sea wall. It was almost high tide and the wind was from the east. This usually means that the sea front would be closed at some time around high tide. Sure enough, half an hour later someone got on the radio and announced to the world, well Torbay any way, which is almost the same thing, that the sea front was closed and we were on the new diversion.

The old diversion was my idea. It involved driving out of town on a nice wide road, turning over the ring road, also a nice wide road and back down an other wide road coming back on to our route in Preston. This missed out the section of the sea front that had waves crashing over it; it also missed out 7 bus stops.

Someone in Higher Management did not like this and invented the new diversion. This only misses out 5 bus stops. And the bit with the sea crashing over it,not even higher management are that dumb. It does involve driving the buses along fairly narrow roads at the same time as all the cars and vans and lorries that have also been diverted. While you are watching all these cars, vans and lorries plus the occasional bus coming the other way it is possible to miss, or should I say hit the branches of trees that have inconveniently grown out into the road way. Trees that line regular bus routes tend to get their branches genetically adjusted by the constant passing of 11 ton lumps of bus shaped metal, but we only use the diversion a few times a year. The trees down there don't know that one day their turn will come.

To cut a short story even shorter, when one of our more experienced drivers came in to work this morning he was greeted with a chorus of, "I love the sound of breaking glass."
So embarrassing

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