A Foot in Two Campos

They started resurfacing my street this week.  It does rather need it.  It was in pretty rubbish condition when l viewed my house back in May, and then for the next five months my neighbour was rebuilding the house next door, parking massive delivery lorries on the precarious slope, and dropping heavy tools and breeze-blocks on the ground.

So on Friday they came and re-routed the water.  Not quite sure why, but l guess it's a safety measure to avoid damage to underground water pipes during the resurfacing.  As a temporary measure the water pipes swing overhead across the street.  The water pressure was down a bit at first, but seems OK now.

Still not sure what the new surface will be.  The parallel street which was done within the past year or two has rather nice black paviors.  Those would be nice but would they last?  Our street is much steeper and more awkward. 

In a rather impressive bit of detective work, the Guardia Civil popped into Bar CO2 on the square to track me down to ask me to move my car to give wider access round the fenced-off water supply left uncovered by the engineers.  The car is registered at the ayuntamiento (town hall) so they knew where l live and that l'm an extranjero (foreigner), so they assumed (correctly) that l visit CO2.  Fortunately John was able to tell them l had already moved the car further up the street.

Then on Monday, Juan (the older police officer) stopped me in the square to tell me that the resurfacing would begin that afternoon and that I should take care.  I thanked him, but wondered why he was so concerned.  After all, resurfacing just means laying a few pretty cobbles or paviors, doesn’t it?  Shaftesbury High Street has been re-surfaced so many times in the last few years (all in the name of “enhancement”) that I really couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

And then came the diggers.

Ah. 

Not just “re-surfacing” then. 

Within two hours the diggers had completely and utterly demolished my street. 

© Tamara Essex 2012