Not again!

Some of you may remember just over a month ago when I was stuck in a traffic jam for nearly 4 hours. Well, thanks to the total incompetence of the police, I just had a scaled down repeat performance.

I was on the way to my friend Julie's house (she of the Bengal cats whose appearance at a cat show was where I was returning from last time) and she was going to take me to my friend Susanna's house (which is where I had spent the rest of the cat show day). The route suddenly ground to a halt and we were directed left at a roundabout because the road ahead was closed. I took the same alternative route as the other drivers, stuck in the same jam caused by the extra traffic volume. Just before we reached the road we would have been on before the road block, we were diverted - back to the original roundabout where we'd started! I calculated an alternative again which involved starting off in the wrong direction, got held up by a car being recovered from an accident, and eventually made it by an extremely circuitous route to Julie's. No more problems on the outward journey, though we arrived 40 minutes late at Susanna's.

On the way home, I went into Julie's to see her Bengals and her bunnies (and use her loo just in case...) then set off for home, confident that it would take about 20 minutes, as the crash (so I thought) of the morning would now have cleared. WRONG! The road was even more blocked off, but in the other direction. So why was it taking so long to get along the road (one hour, should have taken 5 minutes or so)? Well, at the end of the road - the original roundabout - there was very little traffic going anywhere, but what there was all seemed to have priority over ours, and we could only creep out a vehicle at a time. And where were the police? Were thay trying to direct the traffic so that the horrendous tailback could be reduced? Of course not. They put up their road closed signs and buggered off home.

Aren't our police wonderful?

By the way, the road closure was caused by a burst water main, so there will be nightmares on the road for days (weeks?) to come.