Shelley Bridgeman: Six reasons roadworks suck

Do roadworks grind your gears? Photo / Getty

I hate digging and I cannot lie. It's just a nuisance when there is digging in the street or on the footpath. There is noise, there is mess and it seldom ends well. What can I say? I do not dig the digging.

Plus, it always appears so poorly planned. No sooner, for example, have the broadband people resealed the street or the footpath than the drainage people come along and dig up the freshly laid surfaces. I wish I was kidding.

So when men in hard hats with machinery and road cones turned up outside my place for an unspecified reason a couple of Fridays ago I was distressed. I had a premonition: this was going to be inconvenient. And it was.

Here are six aspects of this project that were irksome.

1: Lack of warning

Despite the fact the entire pavement and grass verge outside of my place had been rendered unusable, I had not been informed that this digging had been scheduled.

Let me get this straight: several businesses, at least one home-owner and many workers knew this was about to happen, yet the person it would most affect - the person who would live with the accompanying chaos for four consecutive days - had not been advised. Nice. Not.

Men and machinery simply materialised one Friday morning. My home and workplace was instantly rendered an unpleasant place to be. And, as luck would have it, this stealth mission occurred when we had a house guest.

It was the first time all year we'd had someone staying with us. They had visited for some peace and quiet. Well, there wasn't much rest to be had at our place while the surprise earth-works were under way.

2: The accosting

Every resident or visitor who approached our place was accosted by a worker who indicated they shouldn't walk through the digging site.

When they replied they needed to access the property that had been cordoned off like a crime scene, they were ushered through by someone in an orange vest as if wanting to reach our place was some kind of extraordinary requirement.

3: The questioning

As if being accosted wasn't sufficiently inconvenient, on one occasion our guest was questioned about their plans for the afternoon. They were asked: "Will you be home for the rest of the day?" Maybe it's just me, but I thought that was out of order.

Let me get this straight: our daily routines and freedom to access our place have been disrupted but we are being questioned. Really? I'm pretty certain we should be the ones seeking answers - to questions such as: "How long will you be here?", "Why weren't we notified?" and "Who gave you permission to rest multiple pieces of equipment and piping against our fence?"

4: The assault on the senses

Throughout this project, the workers seemed to have no awareness that residents in the vicinity might be trying to work, concentrate, sleep or simply live their lives. For them this was just another work site. They sang, yelled, shouted and made strange chirping sounds.

Metal equipment scraped against concrete. Machinery squeaked. Engines revved. Airbrakes sighed. Reversing warnings beeped. There was thumping and thudding. The whole house shook. I took headache pills and shifted rooms in an attempt to minimise the assault. I even switched on the vacuum cleaner to drown out the disturbing sounds. True story.

5: Suddenly disconnected gas

A verbal message conveyed by someone who managed to break through the cordon communicated the fact that our house was about to be deprived of gas for "a couple of hours".

Wow. There's something terribly amiss here. These workers would have had known for days (if not weeks) that we were going to lose our heating, cooking and water heating facilities but they gave us just five, maybe 10, minutes' notice. That's downright rude. And, by the way, three or four hours is more than "a couple" in my book.

6: The accoutrements

These were some of the accessories used to cordon off our place: 14 tall orange road cones, a few large orange panels and two orange signs featuring a pedestrian and an arrow. There was also a machine called a "Ditch Witch" left on the council's grass berm directly outside our gate. It didn't move for the entire weekend.

The assault was over by about 5pm on Monday. It had been four days of disruption and untidiness involving a cast of dozens of workers, vehicles and machines. All that remained was a chewed up grass verge and a muddy footpath. Oh, and one tall orange road cone. That's right. They only managed to remove 13 of them.

Two weeks later the rogue cone was still there. It brought back painful memories. It was causing undue distress. I had no idea to whom this cone belonged. No contact details of those responsible had been provided. So, left to my own devices, I heard about someone who knew someone who had a friend who dealt with this kind of thing. Suddenly the cone was gone. I was glad to see the back of it.