I made one of my 23 annual trips to Swindon from ‘Sticksville’ on Tuesday night for the penultimate home League One match of Swindon Town’s season.

No, that doesn’t mean I only travel to the metropolis 23 times a year, but I only do it 23 times for that reason.

Anyway, that caused me to re-encounter one of the follies that make a lapsed Swindonian like me shake his head and wonder what on earth is going on in the town.

I speak of the area that I understand is now known as Kimmerfields.

Which, of course, brings me to my first point.

It seems like only yesterday that we were told to call the region ‘Union Square’. Then, apparently because there are other areas called Union Square in the country, it was necessary to rename it.

(Regent Circus and Regent Street had better look out. I think I’ve heard of another of each somewhere.)

But Union Square itself was a relative newcomer, as we’d previously been told to call it ‘The Exchange’. You didn’t know that one? Me neither.

Personally, I find everyone understands exactly where I mean when I call it Whale Bridge, so that’s what I’ll continue to call it. ‘Where Dutton Forshaw is’, I’ll illuminate if necessary. ‘Just down the canal from Garrards’.

This supposedly pedestrian-friendly area, seemingly designed to allow people to meander around the hotels and building sites of the locality, has cars approaching from all directions, mostly driven by people who are so annoyed at having to perform gyratory gymnastics in order to get from A to B without having to go via M, that they can barely concentrate on doing it safely.

Pausing as I did to allow a car to turn right into Spring Gardens, the vehicle, having driven from the direction of Corporation Street, did what so many do and performed a 180 at the roundabout so that it could approach the same junction along Fleming Way and turn left.

There is an irony that the objective of making it attractive to pedestrians could be consider to be working. That is because, if you are like me, you’ll be so annoyed with not being able to drive where you want, when you want, and waiting an interminable length of time at the multitude of lights, you’ll park up in a street somewhere and walk.

It will be in a street, because Carfax Street car park has been closed, and because Spring Gardens car park will actually be locked with your vehicle inside, before the match you’ve come to watch finishes.

And no, I’m not sharing the secret of where it’s possible to park on the street and still avoid the residents’ parking scheme.

Just what sort of thought process resulted in the single lane, one-way route, flanked on both side by parked cars that is Spring Gardens, being designated as a relief road for the dual carriageway of Princes Street? Or turning Beckhampton Street into the preferred route for anyone trying to get to Groundwell Road?

Anyway, during my perambulations I wandered back and forth between pedestrian areas as traffic flow allowed, almost as if I was following… oh, I don’t know… some sort of underground tunnel arrangement under a roundabout perhaps.

Then, when I did finally reach the police station side of Princes Street, I found the footpath closed, resulting in me walking up the inside lane against the traffic.

Very pedestrian-friendly.