New stripes

The road surface in our street took a battering in the extreme cold winters 2-3 years ago. The council patched it up fairly satisfactorily and it immediately began to degrade again. But it was, it seems, only ever intended to be a temporary repair as it was completely resurfaced during the summer. We had to wait until today, however, to have the lines painted and I confess to surprise that it is a manual process. I always assumed it was done by a vehicle rather than a guy pushing a trolley down the crown of the road. When I was young (when there were still dinosaurs, obviously), it was common to see vehicle tracks through freshly painted road lines, creating fainter ghost lines on the road. But cars were crossing the lines behind these guys without any problem, so I asked them how long it takes to dry and they told me that, as it is now a thermo-plastic 'paint', it dries in 20 seconds. If you don't ask, you don't learn! Anyway, it's good to have the road finished! In case you wondered, it seems a very skilled job, the line being laid by eye, helped by a bell that rings at a regular distance (every metre?).