On my street there are roadworks. There have been for so long that I no longer know what was there before. Sometimes I suspect the street itself was born with the barrier already up, like those turtles that come with a factory-fitted shell.
The barrier is metal, orange, and proudly displays a sign that once announced the works would finish on a date now belonging to the remote past. Beneath it, someone has written in marker: “when?” No one has answered. The question has been there longer than some councillors.
The curious thing is that inside the works there is rarely anyone working. There is a hole, two cones, a sleeping digger and an archaeological silence. Every so often a worker appears, looks at the hole with the expression of someone gazing at the sea, and leaves. We shall see him again, perhaps, in spring.
I have learned to live with it. I bid it good morning. I have watched the neighbourhood children grow up dodging that barrier, and one day their children will dodge it too. Because in this city roadworks are not finished: they are inherited. And when at last, on some random Tuesday and without warning, they remove the barrier and the gleaming new tarmac appears, we shall feel no joy. We shall feel a strange orphanhood, like losing a grumpy but lifelong neighbour.
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