Road junction’s rural past

✒ A COLLEAGUE of mine who doesn’t know the area found herself in two minds at a junction and couldn’t decide which way to turn.

A motorist in the queue reminded her, by sounding the horn, that the traffic light had changed to the colour by which one should proceed.

However, she was so startled that she took the wrong option and nearly ended up on the motorway.

My teacher never taught me the claxon language at school, but, as I’m originally from Brockworth, I do know of the whereabouts of this particular junction.

It seems some drivers need reminding of the rural sacrifices that have been made in order that they may use the road and practise their ‘beepbeep’ language.

For that junction and the slip road were open farmland once. There were hedgerows where – in the month of May – you could find azure-coloured dunnocks’ eggs.

The spot where the contested traffic signal is now sited was a clay pond where newts could be found with amber bellies.

Geoffrey Taylor Gloucester