Road Block

It was a literal road block.  I live in Leeds and just on the fringe of the centre of Leeds is a roundabout known as the Armley Gyratory.  It is a road system from Satan's Armpit.  It is tricky.  On good days there can be tail backs because not all entrances and exits have traffic lights and I have promised myself that once I pass my test I will avoid it, or at least the awful junction that is on our natural route into town.  I have sat on buses taking that exit onto the roundabout and flinched at their near misses.  I wouldn't have a chance!

On bad days, it's bad.  It is the main exit from the centre to the South and West of Leeds.  It can back up so quickly and clog so many roads that if it stalls then all of West Leeds stalls.  In the past there has been a minor collision which blocked one lane and had my reliable delivery driver literally five hours behind time.  There have been times when the river and canal have flooded and one exit on to the Gyratory is blocked.  That usually results in complete chaos.  Today it was a burst water main.

Image from WikiCommons, taken by Gunnar Larsson in 2005 and showing the junction I would have to navigate in extremely busy traffic.  The picture does not do justice to the very assertive driving that goes on

The first I heard about it was a text from Tesco, telling me that while I had booked a slot for delivery between 10am and 11am, there had been issues and I should hopefully receive my groceries by 12pm.  At 12pm I got an apologetic call from a lovely woman at the local depot.  She was very sorry, the van had had to turn around in the horrendous traffic and we couldn't have our delivery today.  She gave me the number for Customer Services who apologised again, warned me that the refund of the money may take a few days, that I would have to put in a fresh order (but showed me how to re-submit my original order) and apologised again.  I consider that excellent customer service.  Something went wrong, they communicated, explained and were generally lovely.

The Marks and Spencer Next Day delivery missed the slot they gave me by two hours and didn't even text.

The picture above was taken 13 years ago and it's strange to see the difference in the skyline.  The notorious Bridgewater Place has since been built.  Some bright architect built a skyscraper that helped accelerate wind speeds on a road that was already something of a wind tunnel and now that road, which is on one of the other main routes into the centre from South Leeds, is closed during windy weather.  I can see me having to go via Edinburgh to get into Leeds centre when the weather is bad.

justjill - bear continually amazes me as well.  I wish I could take the credit, but it's all him.