Rehabilitation

Today I saw a marvellous spectacle which quite displaced my flow of thoughts on examinations for a while. So this is a post that has nothing to do with being an examinee. Rather, it has to do with a flow of a different kind.

As I was walking up the hill, I realised that the last few days of loud machines and aromatic diesel fumes had been because of something called (according to a large blue official-looking sign) the 'Sewer Rehabilitation Program Phase 3'. Not only that, but the agency responsible for it was named the 'Water Reclamation Board'.

I was alternately amused and horrified — amused at the thought of the criminal sewer undergoing interrogation, debriefing, and rehabilitation in some isolated waterway; horrified at the thought of what the juxtaposition of 'sewer rehabilitation' and 'water reclamation' meant. Did it mean that once-criminal sewers had been purged of their water, which in turn was to be given back to society as in Frank Herbert's Dune sequence? Or did it mean that the sewers were being converted to marinas? Or what?

Life is wonderful when you stop to sniff the diesel and read the signs.