Sometimes we just want to scream about all the street pollution in terms of those official signs everywhere telling us what to do, what not to do and how to do it. Here is a little collection of eight.

No drinking

This delightful sign can be found at the end of our street.  I’m not sure who it is aimed at? People who drink out of bottles? So that would be teenagers knocking back Bacardi breezers before the school dance to get round the no alcohol under 18 rule and winos…  that’ll be effective then.

No smoking weed

This sign was launched in Amsterdam a few years ago to a great deal of media publicity but they are very hard to spot because they are always getting stolen.

What can we say. Only in the Netherlands could they devised a street sign which tells you that you face a €50 fine for doing something which is illegal anyway.

In case you wondered… you are not allowed to smoke weed in some areas because of the nuisance in causes in the neighbourhood.

Should you commit such a heinous crime.. beware if you run into one of these signs….

What is all this about then? They’ve got some magic rays which can find out your dna just by blasting you? Eat your heart out CSI.

Paid parking

Now for something completely different. A sign which tells you how to do something. Or does it?

This amazingly detailed sign explains how to pay to park in certain parts of Amsterdam. Pretty clear isn’t it?

First you park your car and then you find the nearest parking meter which may be a quite a distance away. Then you… well then you type in your KEN TE KEN. That is, as this artfully-thought-out little illustration shows us, your NUM BER PL ATE.

If you don’t know it off by heart you walk back to the car to find out the number and then back to the meter and start all over again. You may find yourself doing this several times because you haven’t got a pen on you.

Then you dig out your credit card or a direct debit card and use your pincode to pay for however long you think you might need. No cash – too tempting for thieves and someone has to count it. Or you can pay by mobile phone – that’s the secret code at the bottom

Then when you’ve done all that, you may well find yourself waiting 15 minutes for the ticket that doesn’t come. No ticket. No wasting paper and allowing people to pass on unused minutes to the next driver here. That illustration of someone taking a ticket out of the slot is actually someone inserting a payment card. Sorry.

Get dating

There are other weird parking-related signs out there too.

The good old Dutch. They just love handing out permits.  This sign would appear to indicate that the parking place is for people who have a permit to date by car…

No bike parking

Get the message? THEY ARE GOING TO CUT OPEN YOUR BIKE LOCKS AND TAKE YOUR BIKE AWAY BECAUSE THEY ARE GOING TO DO SOMETHING TO THE PAYMENT. THEY PUT UP TWO SIGNS JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED THE FIRST ONE.

Don’t do anything

There is also information overload.

What a friendly place Amsterdam’s Vondel Park is. No drums, no trumpet playing, no selling, no amplified music and no barbecues – apart from the official barbecue spots.

But of course overloaded signs are not just confined to the cities. Here is a little gem or two, courtesy of Onno Aerden’s Twitter feed.

And all for a little country path. Amazing.