Altering passing place signs in Sutherland and the wider Highlands is not funny any more

The Postie Notes by Pete Malone

ONE of the things that keeps me amused while out and about in the post van is street furniture. By that I mean road signs, telegraph poles and the like.

They range from the interesting, old sign pointing to the telegraph office in a post office which is no more, to the lovely, angular post office telephone cable marker on the road past Achina.

My enjoyment of such things just confirms that posties in general, and me in particular, are all a little bit odd.

That’s not so say that everything posted on a pole or by the road is entertaining.

We won’t forget in a hurry the signs exhorting people breaking lockdown in 2020 to stay at home, and there are only so many times you can see the “a” on passing place signs changed to an “i” and still find it funny, particularly when there is so much uproar about litter and human waste along the North Coast 500 tourism route.

Some instructive signs seem to be invisible. I often stop people on a clearly signposted dead-end road heading to the middle of nowhere, and where the tarred surface gives way to a track and then to something resembling a dried up riverbed.

“You do know this is a dead end”, I inquire?

About half the time I am greeted with thanks, my words are heeded and the driver will turn around and head back to the main road.

The response of the other 50 per cent of drivers is split evenly between the, “It is going in the right direction so I will be using it anyway”, and the, “My sat-nav says this is the road to Durness (or wherever it might be ) and I believe my sat-nav before I believe you”.

A lot of drivers will even ignore signs that say “Road Ahead Closed”, and will crack on regardless.

If you take the trouble to stop and advise, they respond: “Oh, I’m only a bike/motorcycle/camper van (or whatever) – they’ll let me through.”

The size of the vehicle is not going to cut much ice if the road has been dug up or a bridge been demolished to make way for a new one.

A lot of what we see on road signs is graffiti. The word comes from the Italian word “graffito” meaning a little scribble and has the same root as many of the words we associate with writing such as autograph and biography.

A more sinister and insidious form of graffiti I have noticed recently are labels stuck to post boxes and bus shelters urging people to refuse the vaccine and accusing the government and the NHS of a cover-up.

I think whoever coined the word “covidiots” must have had people like this in mind.

A lot of those who drive the NC500 stick labels on the various NC500 signs along the route – a sort of Kilroy was here but in self-adhesive form. If you don’t know who Kilroy was then you need to ask an old person.

My favourite piece of graffiti is shown in the photograph above.

Some enterprising wag has modified the sign on one of the bridges warning of the risk of plunging into the water to suggest the existence of a giant octopus with a taste for grabbing tourist vehicles and pulling them in to the deep.

If only it was true and it could be trained to pick only those cars driven by people who like to change “a” to “i” on passing place signs and campervans who don’t know what a passing place is or how to use it.

– Pete Malone is a postman based in Bettyhill.

Related news: Being a postie on the north coast in winter is no picnic

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