Apathy Sketchpad

There are some things in this city that I don’t quite know what they’re for. The Starbucks directly opposite Starbucks, for example, or the plug sockets fifteen feet above the lecture theatre floor. But one of the biggest mysteries is why they insist on building things which could only possibly be useful as a placebo.

Now, I’m all in favour of placebos in their place, but their place is a double blind medical trial, or possibly a glass which contains Coca Cola but for a change no vodka. Their place is not a pedestrian crossing. There are a number of buttons in Leeds attached to traffic lights, which when you press them, make a little light come on saying “wait”, and I’m almost certain the traffic lights do precisely what they would have done had you never been born. Then the light goes out and the cycle begins anew.

And yet, not only do they waste money building these wholly pointless switch boxes instead of adding some pedestrian lights to the Burley Road Junction of Death, which could badly use some, but people still press the buttons. And then, having pressed the button, they do precisely what they would have done had the button never been built. As soon as a gap appears in the traffic, they walk across the road, because if they don’t, they have to wait for the lights to change, which is often as long as a fortnight.

But the strangest placebo in Leeds, and I realise it’s probably not a subject many readers will be familiar with, is the lock on Adam’s house’s bathroom door. For background, it’s not really a door at all, so much as a big door shaped rectangle of wood hanging from two small wheels attached to the top, which are held onto a runner on the wall by nothing more substantial than gravity and about half a centimetre of thin metal. The slightest upward nudge will send it crashing to the floor. It is easily removed and replaced. This plainly not being good enough, the designers also added a lock. The lock is a standard bathroom sliding bolt, but, since the door moves sideways, it had to be mounted facing forward, so the bolt extends into the door itself. This has the net effect of mashing up the handle when it is closed and dislodging the whole door when it is opened. It makes no significant difference to how hard it is to open the door