I was working at home on Easter Tuesday, enjoying the peace and quiet, when a convoy of heavy vehicles rumbled into the street and stopped outside my house. Fortunately it was not a reenactment of the opening scene of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They were here to replace the water main.So I sat at the computer wearing ear protectors, while trucks beep-beep-beeped backwards along the road and pneumatic machinery ripped up the asphalt only a few metres from my front gate.
The workmen were wandering in and out of gardens because they had to fix up a temporary water supply for everyone in the street. (We're now supplied from the main in the next street via a Heath Robinson series of hoses.) When I heard a knock on the door and spotted a luminous yellow jacket through the leadlight panel, I guessed that one of them wanted me to move my car. But my visitor was a parcel courier. He was delivering a box of books that I'd ordered from Amazon. But the best thing was I'd forgotten the order, so it was a delightful surprise.
The books are
- Richard Fortey, The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum
- Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish
- Sean B Carroll, The Making of the Fittest
(BTW, I'm thinking of surrounding my vehicle with striped tape because that obviously deters car thieves.)
