XPost: alt.usage.english, alt.english.usage   
   From: G6JPG@255soft.uk   
      
   (AUE/AEU removed from followups as this is OT for them.)   
      
   On 2025/8/31 15:54:10, HVS wrote:   
   > On 30 Aug 2025, Peter Moylan wrote   
   >   
   > -snip-   
   >>   
   >> The "big town" in the area is Rushworth, population a little over   
   >> 1,000. ( went to school there for a short while. A single room,   
   >> six grades and one teacher. We didn't have books, only slates and   
   >> slate pencils.) It has the widest main street I've ever seen. You   
   >> need a packed lunch to cross it. The town was founded in the gold   
   >> rush era, and they allowed for growth. These days there's a centre   
   >> divider with trees, separating two wide one-way streets, but I   
   >> remember when it was just a huge expanse of road, big enough to   
   >> contain a football oval.   
   >>   
   > Many prairie towns in Canada have unnaturally wide streets, which we   
   > were told were surveyed to allow a standard farm wagon hauled by four   
   > horses to make a U-turn in the street.   
   >   
   > I don't know whether that's true or a popular myth, but it seemed a   
   > reasonable metric for laying out rural towns in the 19th and early   
   > 20th centuries.   
   >   
   My grandmother's town (was really a large village not too long ago),   
   Bedlington, has a very wide street:   
   https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y4fsnrbHWDizKaNT7 - so wide they used to hold   
   the annual miners' gala there (may still do if it exists). I often   
   wondered why such a small place has such a wide main street, though I've   
   never actually tried to find out.   
      
   --   
   J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf   
      
   ... unlike other legal systems the common law is permissive. We can do   
   what we like, unless it is specifically prohibited by law. We  are not   
   as rule-bound and codified as other legal systems.   
   - Helena Kennedy QC (Radio Times 14-20 July 2012).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)