I Wish I’d Left The Hole Thing Alone Poem by C Richard Miles

Some months since started this whole thing
Which nearly makes me swear and curse:
It was when all the surfacing
Along my street got worse and worse
And so I rang the council lot
To see if they had cash to spare
To mend the holes that I could spot
That frost had cracked, needing repair.

And, yes, they had: they came with trucks
Filled up with tarmac steaming hot
And, as I hung on tenterhooks,
With baited breath, they dumped the lot
To fill up potholes in our street
Which wide had grown to gnaw and gnash
Chunks from expensive cars, and eat
Away our no-claims bonus cash.

I breathed a sigh of rash relief
As smooth as silk our street appeared
When suddenly, in disbelief
I spied new terrors, as they neared,
For though the bitumen was set
Enough to walk on, it still steamed.
That was as far as it would get
For in the distance diggers gleamed.

They bared their sharp impressive fangs
Intent to chomp the road to bits
Whilst followed by steel toe-capped gangs
Of workmen who, devoid of wits
To realise that all that day
Their brighter brethren long had worked
To reinstall the new roadway
But underneath hard hats they smirked:

“It’s not our fault, ” they soon declaimed,
“We just obey what we are told.”
As I my loud misgivings aired,
Came the reply that knocked me cold:
In laying down the new tarmac,
The weight, which pressed down by the mound,
Had weakened pipes and formed a crack
To let gas leak from underground.

And so they must repair the faults
And do their best to make things good
But soon some gormless, dozy dolt’s
Pick, misdirected, caused a flood
For he had nicked a water main
Just underneath the new-made mountain
Of earth he’d delved, and endless rain
Now spurted from a man-made fountain.

After some days they staunched the flow
And drained the lake and plugged the leak
And fixed the gas pipe just below
Now they had reached the second week
But just as holes began to fill
With patchy tarmac, still unstable,
One badly placed pneumatic drill
Cut through a mains electric cable.

And so new excavations deep
Were mined throughout the pitch-black night
Which rendered useless thoughts of sleep
As workmen toiled to give us light
When morning broke, I poked my head
As silence ruled, outside my door,
Like patchwork quilts upon my bed,
The street looked worse that long before.

And so I phoned the council, long
Complaining that they’d spent my tax
On stupid schemes, which all went wrong
Because their standards were so lax
But. just as reassuring tones
Started to state all would be fine,
The signal faded from our phones,
Conversation cut, like the line.

I grabbed my mobile to report
That disconnection had occurred
But only after serious thought
Since I was sure I’d hear the words
That to restore the service back
Might call for several skilful men
To lay the line, and new tarmac
Would have to be ripped up again.

And so, their vans have filled our street
And taken every place to park
And words, that I dare not repeat,
Come as the residents remark
That Hitler’s bombs did not do worse
To scar the landscape all around
Than all these workmen, as they curse
And decimate defenceless ground.

And, as I watch the working team
And go deaf from the drill’s loud roar,
I can’t avoid the urge to scream
Out of my ever-shaking door
That all these woes would not have come
If they had left the street alone
And so I wish that I’d stayed mum
And thought before I’d rung to moan.