Kentish Express Ashford & District
Double yellow line debacle beggars belief
Last week contractors were laying new pipework in Park Street, Ashford – opposite Wilkos and the taxi rank. It only took a couple of days and they did a very neat job of what we think was replacing what looked like a drainpipe of some kind.
But – and here we change into Victor Meldrew “I don’t believe it!” mode – this whole area, barring the taxi ranks, is double yellow-lined.
However, the yellow lines are extremely pale and badly eroded in places, the kind you look at and think “they could do with a lick of paint”.
So, when the work was finished there were patches where new tarmac had been laid on top of the trench that had been dug.
Yet rather than quickly run a painting machine around the whole area, all they did was paint a new yellow line on top of the new bits of road surface.
Now we have three small sections of very bright yellow lines and the rest is as it was.
And that brings us on to the subject of white lines in and around Ashford at road junctions and the like.
Sorry, don’t get us started on that or we would fill the rest of today’s paper with examples of how bad or non-existent they are!
What a difference a few weeks makes. In June, we printed a picture from regular contributor Ted Prangnell of a family of swans on the bank of the River Stour in Kennington, with the cygnets little more than fluffy feather balls.
Well Ted caught up with the same family setting out for an outing on Sunday and the difference in the size of the cygnets is quite noticeable.
Oh, how the mighty are fallen.
Tiger Woods was for many years comfortably the best golfer in the world.
But his chequered personal life, a back problem and a dramatic loss of form has seen him take breaks from the game and his ranking tumble.
So a member of the Nuts and Bolts team was rather surprised recently to spot a book by the international star – ‘Tiger Woods: How to Play Golf’ – on sale in the window of the British Heart Foundation charity shop in New Rents, Ashford, for £4.
And that was before rounds of 80 and 76 saw Woods miss the cut at the recent US Open, something that would have been unimaginable a few years back.
After his dismal performance the book disappeared.
Now that was either because (a) someone bought it or (b) the staff thought it would never
sell. Our money’s on (b).
We’re fast approaching the season of school sports days.
Many children across Ashford are probably relishing the chance of taking on their rivals in the egg and spoon race or the 50-metre dash.
But it could be a day that will terrify some parents as their offspring enter them for the mums or dads race.
That’s because the indignity of finishing last could live with them for months to come.
So we were rather interested to get an email from online retailer MandMDirect.com claiming they have seen an increase in the sales of their women’s trainers by 47%.
So competitive mums, it seems, aren’t taking any chances of either slipping at the start or treading barefoot on a stone halfway down the course and hobbling across the finish line.