I keep seeing these bits of metal on the side of the road/in the gutter and cannot work out what they are or where they come from.
They are clearly made of steel because they are sometimes rusty. It is not hard steel because the strips can be easily bent. They are all the same width (about 2/3 mm) and roughly all the same length (about 20 cm).
Any ideas?
http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r674/Clennam/IMG_20150726_1049390561_zpsh3jgqg6a.jpg
Here’s closer picture….
http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r674/Clennam/IMG_20150726_1050055961_zpsalm9fxwt.jpg
…. “a” closer picture!
I can help you, Pajp! The picture shows a metal ruler, used for measuring things. The gradations are in “cm” (centimeters) and inches, ie metric and imperial standards.
Oh dear. And you’d been doing so well recently.
LOL
Amazing! I’ve got one of those! Stainless Steel, made in Sheffield (natch). Imperial measurements only, none of your stinking foreign centimetres.
I mostly use it for measuring my collection of Beano Albums.
Let’s see: yep, still 12″ of the Her Majesty the Queen’s glorious inches.
http://i.imgur.com/N73LCfa.jpg
No, you are doing it wrong. It would be far more effective if you used a corner of the rules and rubbed vigorously over the surface of the vinly
Some people are so unkind….
Perplexing. Is there any kind of vehicle that travels your local roads that they could regularly be falling off?
I’m sure you’ve thought of that.
I suspect that Johnny Foreigner is involved in some way.
Quite so. This is cheap Chinese steel literally being dumped into the UK market.
Are they roughly the same size or exactly? Do they exhibit signs of being cut? Is there any evidence of construction / electrical works in the vicinity ?
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
@junior-wells They are roughly the same size but (I guess) they are all within a centimetre or two. It’s hard to tell whether they have been cut – the one I photographed has a rough end, almost like it has been torn (which I guess it hasn’t given that the strip – they are flat strips, not round rods – is metal).
They are always at the side of the road or in the gutter and I wonder whether they come from (say) delivery lorries – the metal strips being some sort of stiffener (OK…. I’ll do it before someone else does …. “Hurrr”) in packing material.
Hmm well they don’t sound like off cuts from some other task. More like made for purpose.
@junior-wells You are right – made for purpose: see below.
Thank you Joe.
McCarthy’s Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I think Brian May has been clubbing badgers
A HMHB lyric, shorely?
Have you seen these men in your area?
http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d125/botlblonds/Unknown_1.jpeg
Shhpooky. Sounds like the introduction of a John Wyndham novel.
Unexplained metal rods in gutters to begin with. Social and economic breakdown with a few survivors living in Scottish crofts ekeing out shotgun ammo and petrol for the land rovers by the end.
It could happen.
Vote for Greg Preston.
What a very short ruler.
@moose-the-mooche
No, it’s fine really. I have nothing that I need to measure that’s more than six inches.
Folding it double, eh? Be careful with that, pal.
Two more short rulers:
Lady Jane Grey was Queen of England for only 9 days
Kim Jong Il was only 2′ 8″ tall
You are Ian Holm in Time Bandits and I claim 15 sous
Is this some kind of retro roadside detritus?
I saw an unspooled cassette tape in a roadside verge the other day.
I’ll tell you what you don’t see anymore – white dogshit. What’s that all about then?
My theory, which is mine, is that people pick it up too diligently, so it doesn’t have the time to dry into dessicated white.
Whither the stray Parades of my boyhood?
…sorry, I seem to have become Gil Chesterton.
Or hedgerow grumble as it was known.
Don’t be alarmed now
See you in court, Mousey 😉
Sensible answer (suggestion) – steel bands from lorry tyres
???
Other roadside detritus: How come there is always a pair of trainers hanging from telephone wires? Do people put them there for safe keeping.
And are there still occasions when one can find “specialist” magazines under hedges (or should that read bushes?)
Genuine answer on the trainers thing – it’s a signal that that house is somewhere you can buy hard drugs. Or just sit around and smoke/ingest/overdose on them.
Upthread I had a bit of an Edwardian reverie about grumble mags. “Our boys are so interested in nature, always rootling around in hedgerows,” mums used to cluck affectionately.
Damn straight we were.
@rigid-digit steel bands from lorry tyres makes sense, but I don’t understand – where to lorry tyres have steel bands (Calypso!). The strips are always flat and straight, never curved.
The lorry tyre thing is plausible, but I’m beginning to doubt myself now.
As far as I know, these bands are placed between the tread and the tyre body. Lorry tyre treads are nearly always remoulds and somehow attached to the main tyre carcass – can’t truly remember, it was a very boring lecture a long time ago, and the world has probably moved on (or I never properly understood it in the first place).
As the tread part wears, it can become unattached from the tyre carcass, and these metal strips fly off.
But it sounds like you describe too many of them to suggest this is what they are.
It’s possible, I suppose?
They look like the ‘spine’ from a windscreen wiper. Why they are separated from the rubbers, or found in such profusion, I couldn’t imagine. Perhaps the local crows have taken a fancy to black rubber.
Haven’t we all.
Hurrrr
@pie-chart
Thanks, that’s it – see at 1:56 to 2:10 in this
All the ones I see are about 20cm, so I wonder how they all end up about that length when they clearly start out being longer. Another mystery.
or this…
https://youtu.be/ldSJekyLDrk
Now, if I only knew where those bits of wood came from