what's on the drawing board today

Just for a change... this is what I'm worrying away at, just now. Doing a pictorial map is a major exercise in deciding what to emphasise and what to leave out or simplify, so that the finished job is clear, usable and good-looking.

I'm on Version Three at the moment....

Version Two had a bunch of goofs on it and was too small. Here's a close-up of one way of correcting a mistake.

• Place a piece of paper of the same sort as you used for the drawing, underneath the drawing.
• Cut around the botched area with a scalpel.
• Glue the new paper, which will now be a perfect fit, into place with some backing paper, and start again. Not quite invisible mending, but hey.

(here is the finished project) (and here is the map....)

hunting for the pavement cyclist

If the Bristol Evening Post is to be believed (stop laughing, you at the back, please, I said 'if'...), the very fabric of our society is threatened by hordes of rabid cyclists disobeying the Highway Code like there was no tomorrow. Mere anarchy is indeed loosed upon the world.

So I went hunting for 'em.

First I went down the Gloucester Road. It was slow going, because the traffic flow was impeded, as it always is, by cars parked where they shouldn't be, like these.


Oh look! Cyclists. I wonder if they're anarchists? But damn, they're cycling on the road. And smiling for the camera. Little tinkers.


I had a good look at the sign on the other side of the road here, because there were so many cars parked here that I began to wonder if parking was actually allowed. No, it isn't.


And then I went over to Cotham Hill, which has been in the news lately after a lorry crushed a bicycle and injured the rider.


It was a normal morning. A lorry was parked up on the pavement, and pedestrians were stepping out into the traffic to get round it, as you see here.


Another lorry that had been making a similar delivery further up the hill came down, then reversed around the corner and went back up the hill because it couldn't get past the first lorry.


Pretty normal sort of day for Cotham Hill, really. The driver of that car W837YOC is to be commended for their courtesy, by putting on their hazard lights when parking where they shouldn't really park. A small gesture, but it says "This really is an emergency! If I don't get my hands on a skinny latte very soon, I won't be responsible for my actions!"


Then up Whiteladies Road. All these cars are parked on the double yellow lines on the approach to the pelican crossing.

And this is a popular place to park, higher up, so that you can dash into the bank or the Building Society.

I didn't bother photographing the cars parked on the double yellows that go with pedestrian refuges along Whiteladies Road. In fact I've only uploaded a few of the photos, because otherwise we'd be here all day.


Oh yes. Pavement cyclists? Sorry, I didn't see a single one. Unless this woman counts. She's evidently got a bicycle somewhere near by... I wonder if she parked it dangerously? What do you think?

running the gauntlet

A normal morning on Cotham Hill. The usual vans parked on the double yellows. In the background, a lorry is lurching forwards and backwards, manoeuvring into the narrow entrance of the builders' yard. Pedestrians seize their moment and dash through the gap when it offers itself. Nobody is helping the driver out by waving him back, watching his blind spots. It's about 10:30; the chaps at the yard are probably having a cup of tea.

Forty eight hours earlier, just about to the minute, a cyclist and her bike were crushed under a lorry at this exact spot. It was a bigger lorry, an articulated one; it was swinging into this same entrance when it caught her. Of the comments on the Bristol Evening Post website, a lot of them seem almost to gloat that a cyclist has been badly injured, assuming that she was doing something that she shouldn't have been doing, and reckoning that she'd got what was coming to her. The general attitude is: lorries are dangerous, and the drivers can't see very much from their cabs, so keep well clear or you've got no-one to blame except yourself.

As I commented on the website,

....it's the 'elephant in the room' thing. And it's not just an elephant, it's a visually-impaired elephant. And it's not in the room, it's on the streets.

When I worked on a ro-ro ferry, lorries were not allowed to move around unless under the supervision of crew members with hi-vis gear and radios. And yet it is apparently thought perfectly acceptable that an articulated lorry should be allowed to manoeuvre through one of the busiest parts of town without any sort of control or assistance.