A Summers Day Sabotaged.

So the school summer holidays are upon us in earnest and I'm on the road having dropped No1 Son off at his adventure to the zoo, courtesy of the youth club. So I will quickly nip home and relax in the garden, child free for the next 5 hours of quiet bliss which incorporates a mandatory snooze in the warm sunshine.

My local authority and the highways agency have other ideas however. In the time it took me to drive through a small town, drop off the boy and return, 20 or so heavy set blokes in hi-vis vests, along with digging vehicles, dump trucks, pointy cones and traffic lights have somehow managed to cause a tailback from here to eternity.

They weren't there 30 or so minutes ago, and neither was the entire population of North East Hampshire, in their cars, patiently waiting to thwart my ambition of just a little bit of child free rest and recuperation. This is just not bloody fair. I manage to last a mere 30 minutes of crawling, stopping, crawling and stopping before my inner demons surface and I call the entire membership of the local roads authority a bunch of fuck witted, lame brained, moronic shit for brains dickwads, for ripping up the roads in summer time.

I felt better for my outburst, but also grateful that my car window was up as I did so, for the little old lady in the car next to me may have overheard some truly awful language not heard since the trenches of WW1.

I queued for a full hour along a dual carriageway before being able to turn round and go a different way. Knowing the back roads can sometimes be a blessing but also a curse, for today is also the day that every farmer with his tractor has decided to come out and cut the fields of grass for silage. Learner drivers are still learning, potholes the size of the Grand Canyon are in abundance and... No... For Gods sake, no...

The queue stretches ahead like a metal snake...

It seems I'm not the only one who knows the back roads and so it seems, do the local roads authorities, who have decided that today is not only the day to rip up the roads, but also the day to fit new roadside lighting along this particular stretch of highway.

I'm only 8 miles from home, a cool drink and an afternoon nap... But today, I may as well be on the fucking moon.

Paul Martin is @ukcameraman on Twitter.