pumpkinstrokemarrow

We may have let our last copy of Charles Sale's 'The Specialist' go, but I must have inherited something of my father's interest in such matters, snapping this rather grand workman's privy in Longmead Road. Installed for Skanska by http://www.davlav.com/ who look to be able to meet any conceivable requirement in this area.

This two seater might even have air conditioning and is certainly not the bottom of the range. Looks much grander than, for example, the sort of thing provided at many public events, such as flower shows at Hampton Court.

However, the care of Skanska for their employees is not always matched by their care for us. So the other day I was walking past one of their sit and ride diggers. The digger was swinging backwards and forwards as a pile of something was moved from one place to another, with the top of the digger arm catching the bough of a small tree above on each swing. Either the operator had not noticed or could not be bothered to make the additional hand movement required to lower the arm to miss the bough to save the tree. All rather irritating but I was not sufficiently moved or sufficiently brave to pull the driver up.

Then a few yards further on I walk past their empty van, with window open and radio blaring. I suppose the work is boring if you have to do it week after week, but I never felt the need for music while I worked. All rather distracting. Although I do sometimes have music on while I read - usually with the result that I read rather than listen, which apart from irritating others in the house shows scant respect for the composer. It is not as if I play the sort of incidental music intended for background rather than foreground use.

But I had done my bit that day so I could feel a bit high and mighty. For the second day running I had passed  some broken crockery on the path along Horton Lane, just by the shiny new mini Tesco. On this occasion, having passed it by about fifty yards, came across an empty and reasonably clean plastic bag so picked up the bag and retraced my steps. To find that the crockery was the remains of two broken plates, small dinner or large breakfast, of two different patterns. They did not appear to have been used recently. So how did they get there?

A puzzle which has intrigued me and I have been inventing not very plausible scenarios since. Was it someone returning from a Hook Road car booter with too much secondhand crockery in too small a plastic bag? Was someone taking a plated up meal to an elderly relative and managed to drop it? The rain and foxes cleaning the plates before I got to them. Did some punk snatch a likely looking bag and then chuck the lower value contents? What sort of a person would drop two plates and just leave them lying?

PS: do not confuse Skanska (http://www.skanska.co.uk/) with Svenska ( http://www.svk.se/). Maybe these sorts of words are common in Swedish and all sound the same in English.