Remember the silly traffic light? I passed it again, found it useless and confusing again, and decided to at least try to do something about it.

Saturday I asked our friendly neighbour the town councillor who to turn to, and got a name. Yesterday I sent mail to that person: “Dear Mr Traffic Man, Councillor X recommended you; here’s a photo, this is the situation; would it be a good idea to put up a sign allowing cyclists to turn right at the red light, as everybody is doing it already anyway?” This morning when I came back from swimming there was a message from the traffic coordinator (who Traffic Man had sent my mail to), saying “You’re completely right. I’ll order a sign and have it put up.”

Next time someone says in my hearing that people in the town offices don’t listen to the public, I’ll have a story to tell.

This one was sitting on our next door neighbours’ [1] window sill and wanted scritches. Later, she sat on the window sill of the shop across the road and wanted more scritches.

[1] who are dog people, definitely not cat people.

(late October)

Across the road from where the other lot was, popping up almost a month later and in much greater number.

There were even some on the bike path.

I thought at first that this was a lamp for the road-builders to see by, but it turned out to be a lamp-post that someone must have driven into last night. When I came back an energy-watch man was sawing it into one-meter pieces of scrap metal and the road was too busy to take another picture.

… but how do I get in?

Here’s the cat that tried to sample our roast beef. We used to call him and his sister “the Cats of Little Brain” because last summer, whenever they saw us on the roof terrace, they looked up longingly, mewing, without seeing the obvious way up; but this one seems to have figured it out.

At last I’ve cleared my folder of cat pictures! I’ve given up trying to bake cupcakes for humans belonging to any cats appearing here.

The scruffy-looking stray kitten only didn’t run away as it saw me because it really wanted to lick the last drops of chocolate milk from the tin. The haughty one next to it is called Keesje and lives in the same house as the black tomcat one shouldn’t ring the bell for, who turns out to be called Beau. There’s also a Kareltje, but I haven’t seen him yet.

This seemed a completely useless traffic light until I was editing the picture.

It looked as if it didn’t make sense to make either cars or cyclists stop here unless it is for pedestrians, and the pedestrian crossing is request-only anyway (and very quiet at that). But now I see that it’s actually to protect cyclists going straight ahead, towards the bridge, from cars turning faintly right into the street that runs alongside the bridge until one has to turn either left or right at the river quay. As I’ve hardly ever done anything except turn faintly right into that street myself, I hadn’t noticed.

Not that it wouldn’t be a good idea to make right-turning cyclists exempt from the light: there’s plenty of room for them to the right of any cars.

We went to Utrecht to celebrate our sixteenth wedding anniversary, and to buy books to take on holiday and bras at SandrabrA because that’s the only place we know of that has the right combination of very small girth and generous cup size for the teenagers (and sort-of-medium girth and generous cup size for me; I have a really well-fitting bra for the first time in my life, a rather strange sensation, not completely pleasant for now because underwiring takes a lot of getting used to but it does wonders for my figure). While we were there anyway, we thought we’d find a nice museum.

Read more ...