Every couple of days or so, Happy the roadworker puts aside his pick and shovel, steps inside the wire cage with the big yellow electronic box and spends a restful few hours pressing buttons.

If you're one of the scores of motorists who have sat fuming and stewing in the current tailbacks in Botley Road, Oxford, caused by the ongoing roadworks, you'll have seen Happy.

It's hard to miss him, with his distinctive sleeveless yellow safety jerkin and white hard hat.

His workmates - who also take turns pushing the buttons which manually control the traffic lights during the day - call him Happy because he doesn't smile much.

Beyond words like "hole, dig, shovel, tea-break, foreman coming", he doesn't speak much English either, and this is probably a good thing, especially when he's doing a stint with the buttons.

For some of Happy's passing motorists, their tempers frayed and their fuses shortened by the daily delays, have been known to utter the odd unkind word or six. Usually of a sweary and abusive nature.

The men who dig the roads and control the temporary traffic lights need to have nerves of steel and a skin as thick as their hard hats. So having only a fleeting acquaintance with the English language, like Happy, does have its advantages.

It means, for instance, that he can remain blissfully ignorant of the more colourful phrases tossed his way by some irate drivers - although he must wonder from time to time why all these red-faced people are foaming at the mouth and waving their fists at him.

Perhaps Happy thinks it's some kind of peculiar English greeting, but the rest of his colleagues working for contractors Christiani Neilsen on the Botley Road are under no such illusion.

They arrive at work each day in the certain knowledge that before their shift is over, they'll be cursed at or otherwise verbally abused, just for doing their job.

Particularly if they're the one with The Finger On The Button.

"Each man does about half a day controlling the traffic lights," explained a spokesman for the contractor.

"We swap four or five men round during the week. Controlling the lights manually is more efficient and is required contractually. It's the bus stops that can cause hold-ups.

"Doing the lights is better than digging holes, in the sense that the men get a rest, but it's a mind-numbingly boring job and yes, some people swear at you and we get abuse."

What sort of abuse?

"You couldn't print it." Another spokesman said: "It's only a minority of people. Some people are interested and stop to chat about the work going on. And the work is going very well. It'll be completed by mid-September."

Until then, Happy and his mates will continue to keep their fingers on the button and the lights changing, while some drivers continue to see red.

But maybe by the time mid-September arrives, Happy will have acquired a handy working vocabulary of certain English phrases.

Made up of words of four letters.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.