Visit to town

Saturday we went to Swindon town centre just 4 miles away for a some shopping.

On route the council road painters were being paid overtime and have been doing this activity overnight during the last week, but for the last four weeks there has been partial closure of Cheney Manor estate, could this not have been done in the day.

What is the point of this road graffiti? as shown in the extract from the Highway Code you can enter the hatching if necessary, when is it necessary? 

What  will happen is drivers who have no respect for rules, will just ignore them and overtake drivers abiding to the 30mph limit, this is what causes the accidents that occur down this road. So many road users assess the conditions and drive at an appropriate speed i.e at night and other quiet times 40mph plus.

The council has painted some other diagonal stripes bordered by a solid white line (as opposed to broken line) the Highway Code says this is to protect traffic turning right, why then are they on the nearside of the road? 

Areas of white diagonal stripes or chevrons painted on the road. These are to separate traffic lanes or to protect traffic turning right.

• if the area is bordered by a broken white line, you should not enter the area unless it is necessary and you can see that it is safe to do so.

The queues of traffic at lunchtime to go towards town are dreadfull how on earth are they going to improve this with the massive expansion of the town centre. My money is on hike up car parking, block of every road to car share or residents only force people to walk or bus like they did in the old days!

When we got to town unfortunately the privately owned car park, near the old central post office which is now closed, having been established instead of the two we had only a few years back, to now have one in WH Smiths!, 

We had to use the council multi story the first floor was surprisingly sparsely occupied but when I walked from the end we had parked to the other end where machine was located, I realised why the machine was broken I then had to find a safe pedestrian route to another floor for a ticket. How long did I need to pay?  for I opted for 2 hours (it turned out that was 2 hours longer than I wanted to be there)

Why did I not use the bus? The park ride is not nearby and not designed for residents goodness knows why not when we have paid for them.

For two people to travel to town on the local bus cost as the return fare has just been abandoned, is  £6 for a short trip to town!!

first stop Nationwide, we wanted to lodge a tax exempt form before the end of tax year, the main problem was the Nationwide Call centre had wrongly form sent Corporate tax exemption form! we couldn't complete the tax exemption online, If they had registered this correctly previously this visit to the office would not have been necessary.

The mosquito noise from Brunel statue was obviously not turned on as there were large number of young people just gathered around just making the area unpleasant by the smoking, litter from the fast food, sweets etc

Then a visit to a family butcher surprised to be served by an old old friend and the nearby charity shops we always find this a good way of donating to charity.

Then onto the window blind shop, 1st stopping at Britannia Building Society as I had just received their credit card and wanted to know where I could change the PIN to something memorable.

The advisor did not live up to the title, as the lady could not answer the question which machine I could use.  I thought it was the Halifax but she was adamant it wasn't. So I didn't bother to trust myself and stand in the long queue for the HBOS ATM task unaccomplished. When got home checked the letter with the card it was the Halifax machine that I could use!!! 

Through the smoke tunnel and general loutish behaviour outside the pubs. Local british justice complained about this in a recent case where he had the chance to do something about it but bottled it and gave a 8 month suspended sentence (what sort of message is that carry on behaving in a poor way with the pressed police force you are unlikely to be here again in the next 8 months). What was the point of the police effort in bringing this offender to court.

The window blind shop an assistant who really didn't care.

Then the horrible walk back through the centre strewn with litter, ignorant people, one even refusing to move out of the way of a blind child with a white stick.

An experience we hope we do not have to repeat soon