Observations from a cafe window

Observations from a café window

The other day I was sitting in my favourite café in Surbiton watching the world go by. I have a weakness for American sized chocolate chip cookies and was eating one with the help of a cup of tea. As usual a man was sitting at one of the outside tables talking to passers by who stopped to talk to Becky, his lovely little black poodle. Those of you who are familiar with the town may well have seen him.

Then one of those small flatbed lorries drew up on the opposite side of the road. The side of the cab carried the words ‘The Royal Borough of Kingston,’ and in smaller letters underneath ‘working for the environment’. A small air compressor was mounted on the back, but otherwise it appeared to be empty.

Two men got out and lowered the side of the flat bed. Some small pieces of equipment were now visible, two shovels, and a pneumatic drill. As one does I watched idly wondering how much of the newly laid road they were going to dig up. To my surprise the first man started the compressor, raised one of the paving slabs and began digging a hole roughly two feet square in the pavement just alongside the road. This struck me as a bit odd so I watched closely to see what they were going to do.

After breaking through the rubble and concrete he carefully shovelled all the debris to one side of the hole and then dug through the exposed earth to a depth of about two feet. The earth was equally carefully placed on the opposite side of the hole to the rubble. What happened next was even more odd. The second man, who had been standing by idly watching his mate’s digging technique, now moved in. He lifted the paving slab and placed it carefully on the back of the lorry before shovelling all the rubble onto the flatbed. When this had been completed to his satisfaction, he shifted the earth that had been left on the pavement by his partner, putting it back into the hole and patting it down firmly with his shovel. When he’d finished he got back into the lorry which drove off along the road for fifty yards or so before stopping again. The site of their operations was now left clean and tidy with only a neat level square of earth on one side of the pavement to show that any one had been working there.

I was really consumed with curiosity now, so ordering a second cookie I moved across the front of the café to another table so that I could follow the progress of the workmen. The procedure I’ve described was followed to the letter all the way down the road. At the end they turned round and began working their way back up on my side of the pavement. To be honest all the two men seemed to be doing was that the first man dug a hole while the second followed and filled it in again. Other people in the café had also noticed these strange goings on and a lively debate began as to the purpose of the work. Theories varied from ‘prospecting for oil,’ to ‘one of those candid camera things’.

The lorry finally arrived opposite its’ starting point and I managed to beat the rush outside to ask the men what they were trying to do.

“Well guv,” said the man who’d been digging the holes, “its like this, normally we’re a three man team, but this morning the man who plants the trees called in sick!”