And The Answer Was...

OK, so apparently NO ONE aside from the 0dd Sister (who already knew the answer!) was able to guess the reason why several men spent the morning mopping a field.

To be fair, I wouldn't have guessed it either, but then, my mind is still kind of trying to get to grips with the reasoning behind the, er, reason.

Five men in High-Vis jackets and one supervisor, all wielding mops and armed with buckets of water... ALL were mopping and cleaning the field to remove the white lines put down for the football pitches.

White lines that disappear after a couple of days of rain.  Like the five days of near constant rain we've just gotten over.  Six Men.  Not only would the rain have removed the white lines, but they would have disappeared when they mowed the grass...  They've just mowed the fields near me, which means those fields are also due a mowing.

I dread to think how long it took them to take all those lines out.  Using this article at Wikipedia, and some basic mathematics, I figure the total line length for each pitch is...

684.1 meters

And I THINK - but will have to check - there are three pitches over there.. 2052.3m
Which is almost 1.3miles.

Should I mention these lines also need to be painted back on as it's still football season.  Probably by the same team that mopped the lines away...

Just... gah!  Well done Basildon Council for throwing money into random places.  The same council that spent £30,000 restoring the fountain in the town centre in August.  Thirty thousand pounds on a fountain.  Oh, it's broken down again.

I need a Valium.