Don't Walk

Except of course we have the green and red men, and not the Walk-Don't Walk signs they have in the USA. There seems to be a programme of replacing the crossings with the lighted figure across the road with ones that have the figure next to the button you press to cross. It still seems wrong - you need to look at something in a different direction from where you want to go. I'd like to hear the argument in favour of the new arrangement. To me, it seems a poorly thought out design. If there is a concern that partially sighted people can't see the figure across the road, then why not have both lights, near and far, rather than produce what turns out to be a sub-standard design for the vast majority in order to solve a perceived problem for a small minority.
Aside from the practical documentation of the mundane (that prompted someone putting out their rubbish bins to ask me what I was photographing) this red figure could also symbolise my current state of mind a few days before Christmas, with the house still in chaos after the partial ceiling collapse in the front room several weeks ago. Don't get me started on the frustration of tradesmen that come round promptly enough to look at the job, say they will produce an estimate in a day or two but then have to be chased, twice, to produce one in ten days, and then need chasing again, and again, before they will give a date for the work to start, by now, into the New Year. I feel it should have been possible to get it done in time for Christmas but instead we won't have it finished before the middle of January. Difficult to fathom that sort of work process - if you aren't able to fit something in it would be much better to just say so at the very start. Hmmmm. Said I wasn't going to rant.
And... breathe.