Fiction: How Magog, Tricia, Sarah and I met the Bicycle-eating Railings

The first bicycle-eating railings were installed in front of some Jesus college accommodation. New railings, and a sign saying in bright yellow letters, “if you lock your bicycle to these railings it will be eaten. – Jesus College”

We shared a house opposite, and were fascinated to watch. For the first week or so, no bicycles were left there at all. I don't suppose anyone believed the sign, but no-one wanted to feel stupid enough to have left a bicycle there and had it removed, even in a more normal way.

I imagined their subconscious conversation. “Oh, dear,” they'd imagine a college repairman saying. “Was that your bike? Well, you know, we've got to be consistent or we'd have no policies at all. I'm sorry it happened to you though. Didn't you see the sign?”

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A14/A428/M11 junction

At the north end of the M11, the A14 westbound merges with the M11 northbound, and then splits into an A14-eastbound slip-road and A14 westbound. As far as I can tell, all of the A14 traffic wants to continue on the A14 (there were slip-roads for the M11 sound and A428 east before this), and the M11 traffic normally wants to turn off onto the A14 east. The M11 traffic might want to continue on the A14 west, but it never does seem to. That's hard to describe in words, but it's simple in a picture:

http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.232662,0.071239&spn=0.011223,0.027595&z=15

The point is, it represents an interesting rare example of harmony: normally when traffic tries to merge there's a conflict of interest between people who are already in a lane and want to keep their place and people who want to move into that lane. However, here, almost everyone in the left lane wants to be in the right lane and vice versa, so everyone has an incentive to let the others match speed and move across (else they'd be blocking the way for you to move). And this normally actually happens!