Damn pot holes v mighty pen
’Twas a hard hitting piece, the likes of which usually wins awards and all sorts of accolades.
Anyway, when the paper hit the stands, you can be sure those responsible for the upkeep of our roads spent the day huddled away under their desks, hiding from my hard-hitting words.
In due course, I had presumed that they would crawl back out again, and that life would return to normal, with my words sadly having little long- term impact. I was wrong.
Since my piece appeared in print, something miraculous has happened to our roads. They have undergone a positive transformation of mind- blowing proportions.
For example, all the potholes between my farm and the nearby village of Kilmurry are gone, and hopefully will never return. Not one hole remains to be written about.
And when driving to visit my brother in Aghabullogue, I would now be hard-pressed to find a single solitary hole in which to swing a wheel. The 12-mile stretch, which included a dreadful area of road near Canovee, is now a pleasure to drive on. That particular piece of road has in fact been remodelled and resurfaced to such a fine degree that you would now be mighty inclined to drive on it just for the sake of it..
Never in a million years could I have imagined my words having the impact that they did, it’s extraordinary.
And of course the pièce de résistance around these parts must surely be the Cork to Macroom road. After two horrific years, this poor god-forsaken road has finally got a taste of proper tar, with the result that now the days of driving through Farnanes and believing you are on a road somewhere in the outskirts of Baghdad are well and truly over.
I believe such improvements just go to show the power of the well-written word. I’ll certainly take as much credit as I possibly can.
