De-traumatised Pavements

When I chose the name Pavement Trauma for this blog, I never thought I would actually be writing about pavements but, well, it's a slow news day. Bear with me, there is a point.

When the housing estate I live in was built in the 1970s, the Corpo thought that cars didn't need to be parked beside the houses, communal car parks every few houses would do. The front gardens would be left as gardens, children would frolic on the lawn, vegetables would sprout in their patches, gnomes would fish in ponds, swings would, eh, swing...

By the time I moved there every house that could had a car or two parked in their mostly paved over garden. Concerns over security, convenience, laziness and what have you won the day. One problem - the standard full height kerbs were still in place. So every house has some sort of makeshift ramp to preserve their car's suspension, it looks pretty crap and it can interfere with the rainwater flowing into drains. If you wanted to get the kerb lowered ('dished' in the parlance), you needed to hire an architect to draw up plans(!) and submit them to your local council who, if they approve them, will themselves carry out the work and charge you for it. You won't see much change out of a couple of grand. Nobody bothers, the street continues to look lumpy.

Contractors for the gas company are digging up my street and laying new piping. The pavements are so cratered they have a lunar-look to them. One of the workmen called at the door and offered to 'dish' our driveway for us for €150. Cash, obviously. They had the path outside the house was in bits anyway and were readying to concrete it over again, so giving it a bit of a shape would not be too hard. Half a dozen of these have been done around neighbourhood, I'm sure there will be more. That's €900 so far.

This is not what you would call playing by the rules but, in reality, who loses? The workmen are happy. I'm happy, the neighbourhood looks better, the car is less traumatised. The local council is not unhappy, as they don't know about it, if they did I reckon they would be apathetic, as it seems to be their default position on most topics. Possibly the contracting company would not be happy to hear about their employees extra activities but I suspect a blind eye is being turned. It is of course entirely possible I am only taking such a rosy view of such shenanigans because I am being saved a packet.

And the point to draw from all this? Private initiative trumps dumb public regulation every time? The Irish penchant for ignoring inconvenient rules is as strong as ever and it's no bad thing? Entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well?

I do know this though: When it comes to paved surfaces, a dish is best served without too much gold