For the last few years Sheffield has been blessed
with the services of Amey and their contractors who have been replacing street lights, removing trees (extremely controversial) and resurfacing roads and pavements.
With immaculate timing they chose 3 days ago to close my road for pavement works - by yesterday they had removed the old tarmac and laid the rough tarmac undercoat, and last night I could see my water stopcock cover just a few centimetres clear of the surface.
Watched them apply the smooth finishing layer this morning, and sure enough - stopcock disappears under a layer of steaming tarmac.
An interesting conversation ensued, which involved the suggestion that because Mr. Tarmac-layer hadn't seen it, ergo; stopcock was clearly a figment of my imagination.
I assured him that not only was there indeed a now buried stopcock there which I had used on several occasions in the past, but that with no internal stopcock it was the only way of turning off my mains water in the event of a leak.
Mr. Tarmac-layer still seemed unconvinced, so I offered to find a magnet to try to locate it. That didn't work, so we resumed our philosophical discussion about the ephemeral nature of stopcock existence.
Luckily, another contractor appeared who presumably had quite a lot of experience of spotting stopcocks under fresh tarmac
, and was able to free it from its tomb of still-rubbery tarmac.
Can't help fearing for probably quite a few residents of Sheffield come a severe freeze-up!