frustration causes

Only a teenyweenyweenytinywee little bit of guilt about this.

There may have been some people amongst the tailbacks filling Queen's Drive from top to bottom (with tendrils creeping up Holyrood Road and Horse Wynd) with a deep and pressing need to be on the road such as those heading home from work to catch their child's birthday party, heading to an airport to tell the love of their life not to leave, carrying human organs between hospitals and so on.

There were even one or two cars carrying more than one passenger. Some of them might even have been going somewhere not covered by public transport or beyond the easy reach of human-powered conveyance.

On the whole I find it rather amusing when a single little temporary traffic light (preventing cars from breaking their precious springs on the giant hole in the tarmac just in front of the back of Dynamic Earth) causes a few miles' worth of road to completely fill with beeping, grumpy, shuffling near-stationary traffic. Hopefully a few of them noted the cyclists and pedestrians whizzing past them then looked down at their weak, lazy legs, under-utilised soft-soled feet and podgy bellies crammed under the steering wheel.

When I have to drive and get stuck in traffic I tend to relax; cars are much safer when they have to be driven extremely slowly and if you're driven to a standstill you have more time to look around at the world.

It's a bit of a shame for the people for whom a personal motor vehicle is necessary. If it wasn't for all the entirely unnecessary traffic blocking all the roundabouts and sitting motionless over junctions then this little traffic light would perhaps add an extra twenty seconds to their journey at the most instead of what looked like at least thirty minutes. It's also a shame for all the people who weren't stuck in traffic to have their day darkened by the grumpiness of people who were and feel the need to spread it around.