cone

g'day


and so the world, in places, slowly, gently and in a rash or sometimes considered way, goes back to varying degrees of normality, look you see. i am sure that you, we, the people are quite tired by now of phrases such as "back to normal" or being invited to accept things as the "new normal". let me try to avoid such terminology here.

one of the things i have every confidence the majority of people are keen (if not eager) to see once more is that most splendid of sights of shopping trollies (trolleys) randomly discarded in environments one may consider unnatural. various scrap metal dealers in particular, i suspect, are very enthusiastic indeed about seeing this, but of course only to help rebuild and stimulate the economy with fair pricing for them and subsequent diligent, accurate tax returns.

whilst we are a little way off the return of the sight of a shopping trolley at a peculiar site, fear not. a glimpse from our future comes from a land where the invisible war on the plague has been won, or so reports say. look, and see what awaits ahead, rather than behind.

sure, if you wish to be pedantic (or accurate), no a traffic cone is not a shopping trolley, strictly speaking. but there are many similarities. both are, for example, distributed freely by various authorities (on a provincial and national level) with the (very) tacit implication being they are there for the taking by anyone who feels compelled to borrow or own one. them who manufacture and/or procure these cones know that they do so with funds from the public and so, just like supermarkets use consumer profits to invest in trolleys (trollies) it is accepted that it is fair, from time to time, for those who in a real sense paid for them to take custodianship. at least i think that is how it works, if any of you have any court experience of using that line and it worked i would be eager to hear from you.

few, if any, scrapyards accept traffic cones though. a most regrettable design flaw with traffic cones is that they are not made out of metal as such, but rather some sort of plasticesque type of plastic material. bit rubbery, in truth, which i think is for when motorists drive into them, as they are so prone to do.

please, don't get too excited, or carried away. whereas we here in the UK have more or less won the invisible war on the plague, victory is not secure. such is, though, in New Zealand, where the above picture is from. but not the one below.

we seem to still have some level (or form) of social distancing here in the UK, then. that, or the council or whoever are being cheap, and just placing the one cone down to mark off traffic. no doubt they will blame this on "austerity" or other such cuts. i do wish we could be as flamboyant and generous with traffic cones here, then everyone who wanted one could have one.

once you have obtained a traffic cone (or several), what can you do with it (or them)? this is an interesting question. a quick search on ebay suggests there is a fairly fluent market for selling them, although it might be a bit tricky to answer when questions are posed of the provenance of the cones. sadly, at this time scrapyards are not taking cones, as the arse has fallen out of the market. this is probably due to that lass off of Switzerland (or wherever) doing them temper tantrums about all things what are plastic.

should selling the cones not quite appeal to you, or fit in with your ambitions, well then there are a thousand other things you can do with them. give or take. unfortunately just about each and every one of the one thousand things involve placing a traffic cone on a statue, which is quite tricky to do at this present time.

yes, that is indeed Mum with an absolutely massive (or king of) traffic cones, over in New Zealand. a little known New Zealand tradition is for shops (and other such retail concerns) to hand out traffic cones as a thank you for your patronage. normally it is so that the bigger the cone they give you, the more valued a client you are.

regrettably no, UK retailers tend not to follow this course of discretion. it is still so that, predominantly, the shops here seem to think that they are doing you a favour by taking your money. such is how it has always been, and always will be, no doubt.

little wonder, then, that so many move from the UK to New Zealand, and no, not all of them are Scottish. never mind, let us look in wonder once more at the bountiful, plentiful and many traffic cones what they have in New Zealand.

oh, hang on, before i go. something of a disclaimer. it might not be the case that you can just help yourself to any traffic cones that the council (or similar) place on roads. you should ask any council worker by the traffic cones if it is OK for you to take a few. of course, if they have put the traffic cones up and there is nobody actually near them working, you can take it as a given that they have been abandoned.

many thanks, as ever, for reading. and be careful with the cones.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!