Lumbering walkers put me in slow lane

PAV’S PATCH: WE all used to laugh when Tony Blackburn gave spoof pedestrian reports on BBC Radio 1 back in the late 1960s.

How we giggled into our corn flakes when he talked of a plimsoll colliding with a Wellington boot causing a jam in the high street.

Well, believe me, the day is not too far off when we’ll need traffic lights on the pavement. In fact, only a few years ago, they brought in fast and slow lanes on Oxford Street, London, during the Christmas rush.

I do a lot of walking, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to make progress.

In Ashton, the law prohibiting cyclists using the footpaths is totally ignored and many are the times I have had to step into a busy road so a pedal-pusher can make his way along the pavement.

But even fellow walkers cause problems, and these are steadily increasing. As people get wider it is more and more difficult to pass them. Then we have the lumberers and the shopping trolley pushers. And is it me, but are there far more people using walking sticks nowadays? They are no longer the preserve of the elderly.

I encounter most trouble at pedestrian crossings. I suppose it’s only human nature to try and dodge across before the next car, but people are so busy looking for the next car that they forget to look ahead.

Believe me, the number of times someone has almost walked into me and, had we collided, we would have made a great target for a lorry as we sprawled in the road.

Another cause of inattention is that modern phenomenon the mobile phone. People, especially girls, are lost to the world as they amble along deep in conversation, or pay more attention to texting than making progress.

Isn’t it great when they stop right in front of you to mess with their phone, oblivious to the obstruction they’re causing?

I often ask myself if I’m strange because I want to walk briskly, rather than lumber along.

Girls — again — will often walk three or four abreast just to make it more difficult to get past. Or what about those odd people who stop dead just as they get to the automatic doors to shopping centres like Spindles.

They’re particularly good at this when the weather’s bad, making sure you get even wetter as you and a dozen others try to edge through the tiny gap they leave as they light up, take a last drag or root through their bag.

Believe me, pedestrian wardens are on the way.