Workmanship in London

My second skiing trip (March 1979) was to Kitzbǚhel in Austria, with a group from the Conoco London office.

On our first morning, walking to the cable car to go up to the slopes, we found a big hole in the street where our hotel was.  When we returned from the slopes around 5pm, it was already filled in.  The people in my group, all Brits, said, “If this was Britain, it’d still be there five days later.”

Fast forward to 2023.  The side of a main road in north London had been so badly repaired that the lumpy tarmac is riding up the kerb like a tsunami.  I have seen tarmac melting in the heat and flowing DOWN — I’ve never seen tarmac flowing UP the side of the kerb.  

Just the other day, a bus tried to let out a wheelchair ramp onto the kerb for a passenger.  The ramp couldn’t make contact with the kerb because of the tsunami crest in its path, so the driver had to retrieve the ramp, shut the door, drive the bus further forward past the bus shelter, and try again.  The wheelchair user had to move forward as well in order to use the ramp.  

Such shoddy workmanship.  And this is a country that used to rule a huge swathe of the world.

(London, 2023)