Last weekend we spent our time digging a trench to extend our phone line. A rather difficult task, through the impacted earth over the driveway, although we eventually made quite a neat tunnel and layed down some pipe we’d welded together (using the word ‘we’ in a rather broad sense with respect to the welding).

We rested occasionally after bouts of mattocking, lying back on the drive and watching flocks of lorikeets up in the trees, and I reflected on the carefree life of birds which does not include digging and trying to mattock through rocks.