Public by-ways

As I returned from my exciting visit to the stationers last week (cream correspondence cards you want to sleep in and or dreamily stuff into your shirt) I came across a significant sporting event.

In our city this translates as 'AN EVENT DAY' - meaning that the ordinary parking by-laws are suspended and other, usually much more restrictive ones, implemented. Roads are often cut off and mandatory detours put in place. Whilst I am sure all of this is necessary, it is rather irritating for people who merely wish to drive from place 'A' to place 'B', and are unfortunately required to go through place 'C' (the sporting venue and it's surrounds).

But, you know, you're in a car; you can either drive off in some other direction or just sit there humming away to the Bee Gees and whiling away the time. If, like me, you're on foot however, it's a whole different matter. It turns out that some fool in Council(? must look into it - who actually hold/devolves these powers??) have given the sporting venue and or it's police minions power to close public footpaths as well.

The area in question is one of those annoyingly over developed city venues where pedestrians can either utilise the designated pedestrian paths or die horrible road accident deaths. These are the only options - no sneaking across the road to the other path, no furtively jumping a fence to another road. In my case this meant a three kilometer detour in a sea of thick necked, thick waisted barbarians, all of whom were wearing hideous matching shirts, silly hats and reeking of eau de body odour as they mindlessly funnelled themselves into the stadium to sit, swill beer and scream and wave their arms erratically as another bunch of thick necked neanderthals crashed into one another.

Usually I might have been able to deal with all this with good humour - after all they're just off for a bit of family fun and it's a fabulous opportunity for some anthropological field work. But in this case the odour, the excessively long walk and the pinching shoes led me to call the two people I know who follow rugby league and notify them that they were being held personally responsible for my sore feet and homicidal rage.