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During the early sixties, my wife and I owned a business with a flat above the shop. One bright and sunny morning in early summer, I observed two council workers from the engineering department dressed in traditional garb. I/e Flat caps, corduroy trousers, sports jackets complete with leather cuffs & elbows. These industrious fellows equipped with tape measures were methodically making their way along the road, measuring and inscribing strange hieroglyphics with their yellow wax crayons on the pavement at given intervals. This continued until they eventually reached the pavement opposite our premises and started to inscribe these strange mystical cabalistic signs. Overcome with curiosity and a certain degree of apprehension, I approached the most officious looking of the two. Excuse me I said, but are you measuring positions for new drains? The horn rimmed glasses and flat hat stared back at me with fishlike eyes. We are marking the positions for new street lighting he stated. Meanwhile his opposite number was drawing a circle immediately under our bedroom window. Wait a minute I said, surely you don't intend to place a street light just four ft. from our bedroom window? Indeed we are said the hat and glasses. Couldn't you move it down the road a bit, say a further fifteen ft?
The light will shine into our bedroom all night I said. My advice to you is to install thicker curtains said the hat and glasses. Feeling somewhat deflated, I enquired when the lamp posts
would be installed. Early next week he said. At this point the men plus tape measure and crayons moved further down the road. At dusk on the following Sunday, armed with pencil and paper, I did an exact copy of the circle and its mystical signs on the paper and then with the aid of a wire brush, completely erased all trace of the offending mystical symbols under our bedroom window.
I then transposed an exact copy of them fifteen ft.further down the road. During the next week all of the new street lights were installed, including the one which would now never shine into our bedroom window. Last summer we returned for a holiday from our home in Australia, to our old stamping ground, and there it stands, the now old street light, enduring the rigors of time, positioned to ensure a good nights rest to whoever now resides in our old home
Arthur. E. Bensley
Gold Coast
Queensland
Australia