On the subject of Road works. Some years back, I had a job as a milkman. One morning, I found that one of the roads on my round had been closed off by a bunch of workmen. This gave me the inconvenience of having to haul crates and crates of milk, hundreds of yards to serve my customers, followed by a 5 mile detour to continue the round and another 5 mile detour at the end of the round (to get back to the depot). This also had the knockon effect of having to get someone to toe me back to the yard (due to the milk float running out of juice). This went on for several weeks. You can imagine my anger when I found out that these workmen were only laying cables under the pavement. On site they only had one mini digger, and a couple of vans parked at the side of the road. No way did this justify closing the road. Even more ridiculously, they left it closed 24hrs a day EVERY day, even though they were only on site a few hours a day, a few days a week.
One day I finally decided to challenge their authority. On my return back to the yard, instead of making the detour (which I hadn't enough juice to complete anyway), I simply moved their barrier out of the way and proceded to drive through the closed off section. Immediately, they started shouting abuse and rapidly blocked my passage with their vans. I got out of the float and started to plead my case that I couldn't go round the long way, as I would run out of power before reaching the depot (now just a few hundred yards away). As things got more heated I then manouvered the milk float onto the pavement, to obstruct their digger. By this time, quite a few of my customers had come out into the street and were giving me their whole hearted support (they had suffered weeks of having to park their cars miles away).
Police were called and, at first, were insisting that I was totally out of order for dissobeying the road sign (the red "road closed" sign). At this point one of the onlookers had cheekily painted "including 'O Halleran vehicles" on the sign, and turned it to face towards the fracas for all to see. I was bundled into the back of a police van, but just as they were about to cart me away to the station, they decided they wanted me move the milk float first. I refused to move the float until I had seen some documentary evidence that these cowboys had any more authority than me to close the public highway.
From inside the van, I could hear the commotion getting more and more tense as the local residents were starting to get out of hand in protest against the workmen and the police. By this time their numbers had been swollen by other milkmen in the throng, that had walked up from the depot to add their support. Eventually a copper came into the van and told me, "OK You've won, they've agreed to leave the road open, will you move your float now please." "Not until I hear it from one of the workmen." The copper went off and and returned with one of the workmen. Begrudgingly he agreed that from now on the road is going to be left open but if anyone is hurt as a result of an accident blah blah blah..
Unfortunately they completed their work a few days later and left the area. Just as I was begining to enjoy my minor victory.
