Crossing over Horn Lane I noticed that its sign had, as usual, been defaced so as to read Horny Lane. Yet again it brought a smile to my face, it was just the kind of childish, immature thing that I found really funny, the kinda thing which made me go hee hee, ha ha. God knows why that should be the case but it was a simple fact that when I saw a Y placed at the end of the Horn I would find it hard not to crack up, hard not to have a right old giggle and momentarily think the world was a better place. Strange thing was that Horn Lane did not look like a horny kind of lane at all, instead it was just a typical road in Woodford, ram packed with parked cars, lined with vastly overpriced detached and semi detached houses. There were no bushes, no hidden pathways onto open fields at the back, nothing whatsoever which might encourage those who were into a bit of hanky panky to hank hang pank around there of an evening.
The Horny Lane signs were regularly cleaned up, presumably by residents, so that the offending y was removed, but then sure enough after a couple of weeks the y would always be back again. Guess this meant there were at least two people living close by who were at opposite ends of the moral spectrum, who felt compelled to keep an eye on things as far as the signs were concerned, so as to ensure they were always as they wanted them to be. There was someone enraged enough each time they saw the Horny to get down and some scrubbing so that things were once again proper for them. Of course there was also someone with a nice big felt pen who was ready to come along and sauce things up a bit by reinstating the y.
In my mind the former must have been an uptight banker or possibly his wife, terrified of any potential threat to the devaluation of their property by appearing as if it was located on a road called Horny Lane, whilst the latter of course was probably a teenage delinquent off his or face on skunk, ready an’ willing to cause a bit of havoc. But who knows who it really was? It could have been anyone, it could have even been a chap in his 50s with an infantile sense of humour, stepping out on one of his night walks with Friend of the Devil by the Grateful Dead on his big Bose headphones wrapped around his head, on the look out for a bit of mischief.
TracelessTrails 