Residents of Wanborough Road, near the A420 at Merlin Way, have spent years reporting Amazon lorries and other HGVs parking overnight on the street, sometimes blocking driveways and footpaths. Double yellow lines cover only part of the road, leaving gaps drivers have continued to use.
Barriers were put up at the nearby Merlin Way layby to stop overnight parking there too, but a local councillor says drivers have simply been moving them aside to get their lorries in, before putting them roughly back. He has contacted Amazon to discuss the issue and is asking the council whether any spare land could be used as proper overnight lorry parking, rather than blaming the drivers themselves, who face tight schedules and the cost of using the nearby Sainsbury's truck stop.
What nobody seems to have asked is how the barriers themselves feel about this arrangement. Having been installed to say no, they now spend their nights being gently relocated by men who clearly respect infrastructure enough to put it back afterwards, which is more consideration than most garden fences get.
Brenda Pask, 72, of Old Town, who has lived there since before it was old, said she had always believed a barrier was a barrier, not a suggestion. "Ron put up a trellis once and nobody moved that, because they knew he'd see them from the shed. These lorry men want a shed of Ron's calibre watching them."
Gary Tench, Area Manager at Tench Paper Solutions in Westlea, said the saga reminded him of the time he introduced a one way system around the printer, using nothing but a strip of tape and strong eye contact, only for Julie to simply step over it twice daily without comment. "You can police a layby," he said, "but you can't police human nature, or Julie."
Council officials are understood to be considering a larger, heavier barrier, on the theory that what failed at one weight might succeed at another. Drivers, meanwhile, continue to face a straightforward choice between a free layby and barrier, or a paid truck stop with no barrier at all, which is not much of a choice.
By Monday morning the barrier was back in its original position, looking, residents said, faintly embarrassed.