When the Road People proposed to close the roads of our village, they sent us all warning letters, and put up signs everywhere with the most pessimistic estimates of how long the work would take. Consequently, everyone was delighted that they could more or less get to their houses most of the time while the work was done.

The water company take a sterner view. They sent letters to some people saying that the water would be turned off for the day, but made no mention at all of the fact that they were planning to dig a monster hole in the middle of the road which would block it entirely for two days, and would in fact be isolating some houses with no access at all. Consequently, everyone I met who mentioned it was spitting tacks.

(They also instructed their guys to park right across our drive, without mentioning it to us! Fortunately, one of them was a thoughtful soul, and observing that there were several houses that would be unnecessarily aggravated by this, disobeyed instructions to park the van so we could more or less get past it. )