I spent a few days in Devon last week, braving the weather.
The kidult was graduating from Exeter University and the clan all duly traipsed down, taking a holiday let in Dawlish, and making a wee break of it all.
It was all rather charming really, both the graduation (she did very well and we're very proud), and the stay in Devon.
But being nothing if not a saddo, I spent much of my time in Dawlish working out how to reconfigure the road layout. It could be such a magnificent little gem, Dawlish, the ultimate railway town by the seaside, with top-quality public realm, featuring a wide variety of exotic ducks and black swans, were it not for the fact that some transport engineer (who should be summarily shot) has had a bit of a hissy fit with the junctions in the centre.
The place is littered with a rash of needless Pelican Crossings (actually I think they technically might have been Toucan Crossings, but I am not going to dignify any of this by confessing that I might know the difference) at least half a dozen of the blighters in close proximity, so that the crucial area immediately adjacent to the heritage feature of the Brunel railway doesn't work at all for people.
Nor does it work for cars, actually. In fact, it only really works for... er... Pelican Crossings (and even those seemed at odds with each other!) you could have a Pelican Crossing convention in Dawlish, if such a thing was of interest to anyone who has a life.
