Bloodymindedness

What a lovely word that is! I do like to hear of those little examples of bloodymindedness that bring a smile to the lips and there have been a couple just recently.

First, a Dorset village has been begging for years to have a bypass built but there has never been enough money (and, even if there were the funds, there would probably be several years of arguments about the route of the new road). The villagers have become so fed up with the volume of heavy goods vehicles and other traffic, that they have started action. A group of them have drawn up a rota to use the pelican crossing in the village constantly during the day. One of them presses the button, waits for the traffic to come to a halt, then crosses the road and immediately presses the button on the other side to cross back again. It is reported that queues of traffic up to four miles long have formed as a result.

The second example involves a new housing development. Many buyers of the new houses were delighted by the view they had across an open field at the back of their houses. Then they learned that the field was to be turned into a sports ground with floodlit football pitches. As an aside, I have to wonder how this intended development of the field was not discovered by the solicitors in their pre-purchase searches. But never mind that. The house owners petitioned the local authority to have the sports ground turned down, but to no avail. Then someone asked if, perchance, there were badgers on the field, it being illegal to disturb the creatures. As it happened, there were no badgers, but the residents went out one night armed with spades and dug a few entrances to "badger setts". They then contacted a taxidermist who supplied them with some hairs of badger fur which they scattered around the "setts". An expert was called in and he promptly declared the field to be inhabited by badgers. The sports ground plan was dropped immediately.

Lovely stuff!