Riverbend" is at the end of Sproxton Lane, and it is also at the end of the sewerage line, and so they installed a sewerage flushing kit right outside our gate but too far onto the road to be avoided by the turning of the weekly garbage truck.
It would've been only a question of time before it was smashed in, and so they decided to surround it with a concrete base, no more than ten centimetres deep and twenty centimetres wide on all four sides, the sort of handyman's job one chap could've done with a shovel and three or four bags of Quickset Concrete for $9.95 a bag, but not this one!
This one is paid by the taxpayers, and required one chap to come out some days ago to "construct the formwork" and surround it with red safety netting, and then this morning for two chaps in two trucks to come out, to be joined by a concrete agitator truck with the tiniest load of concrete ever carried. It was all done after half-a-dozen shovelful. (Well, not quite because one chap had forgotten his "woodie" to smooth the top of the concrete, and so they both left and came back an hour later which is longer than it would've taken the Chinese to do the job.)
"I guess you don't mind how small the job is?" I asked the concrete truck driver. "Nah, mate," he grinned, "money makes the world go round."
