I was away for a couple of weeks and when I came back the street was strangely quiet. No orange pink plastic barriers, no drilling or digging, no temporary traffic lights, no heaps of clay, no cheerful PR sign boards. Up where the lids were broke, though, more mysterious signs have appeared:

What do they mean? That the road will soon be dug up again?

Thames Water are so reliable, and now they’re back. Just at the other end of the road, about 25 yards from that deep clever trench with the plane tree roots. (In Greece wherever there is water, overground or underground, plane trees grow, and maybe Thames Water have some connection with them too.) Their signs suggest that the quality of their service and of their water could be measured by how often they dig up the road. Having improved everything three weeks ago we were still not satisfied! We’re back to improve things even more. And by the way, thankyou for your patience. How do they know that we’re patient?

They’re promising to finish last week, before they’d even started! Maybe even sooner!

This is weird. Not seen one of these before. I would have asked one of the guys sitting in the van with their phones what it was all about but they didn’t look very chatty and having queued the traffic was racing past the temporary traffic lights as soon as they got a green light so it was not so easy to approach the van:

Someone has been pointing out the obvious a bit further up the road, where I complained earlier about the pavement being poorly reinstated:

But it needs doing all the way up to the bus stop! Not just that little bit.