At the pedestrian crossing outside what is now Mailboxes etc at the Pembroke Road junction of Ruislip High Street, there are some blister tactile paving stones to assist pedestrians who are blind or partially sighted in finding where the crossing is.
There are a few maintenance hole covers in the pavement here, and one straddles the tactile paving area. However, some time before Google Streetview took their 2008 photo, back when the shop was Ruislip Office Supplies (below), the cover had been put on the wrong way around.
After a photo of the ‘they had one job’ cover was posted onto Facebook, and after its run of at least seventeen years, surviving three different shops, three London Mayors, seven prime ministers, local, national, and European elections, the global financial crisis, the referendum, Brexit, and the pandemic, the reign of tactile dissonance in Ruislip High Street was last month brought to an end – just three days later.
The cover was rotated round and has been the way it should have been all this time, reminding everyone who enjoyed seeing it the ‘wrong’ way around… to be careful what they post onto Facebook!
However, a little further up Ruislip High Street, there remains an echo of where the road used to run, before the junction with Midcroft was reshaped to have the pavement widened: the double yellow line markings over the Openreach inspection chamber cover remain in their original position – only now, in the pavement rather than in the road.
Those with OCD had probably noticed them before, but for everyone else – look out for them next time you walk along the high street!
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