When resident Deborah Bowler spotted a couple of council workers replacing the Torless Terrace street sign on Friday she naturally thought nothing of it. Only when she spotted the council’s mistake did she really see the funny side.
Torless Street’s signs have long been the target of “wags with a ladder and a bit of white tape or paint”, but never before had the council preempted the ruffians nefarious hi jinks with a play on words of their own. No until now, anyway.
The new sign was proudly emblazoned with the moniker ‘Topless Terrace – No Exit’ garnering further unwanted exposure for the long suffering residents.
“At first I thought, it’s only been up for a day and someone has messed with it already. But on closer inspection I realised that’s the real deal,” she told stuff.co.nz.
Council spokesperson Richard MacLean said that his office were now fully abreast of their error and would “do a bit of an investigation and get things fixed to protect the honour of the good people of the lane.”
“We don’t want it turning into a tourist attraction or to be overrun by tittering schoolboys.”
Tittering, that’s a good one.
This is not the first time the innocent residents of a Wellington street have become the butt of a joke that was none of their own making.
In 2008 the residents of Old Bullock Rd in Highbury, found themselves being burdened with the slightly more bawdy ‘Old Bollock Rd’. The council fixed that particular cock-up by selling off the sign and donating the proceeds to testicular cancer research.
MacLean said the likely cause of the latest sign malfunction was a dodgy spellcheck.
“Hopefully the public will be reassured that we haven’t got [British comedians] Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd running the signs department.”
Image: stuff.co.nz
