A cowardly escape from the problems of peace

T.Aldous is at the new library site at Noddy, complaining that one of the shelving units is six inches too long, when a BT engineer calls.

"Where do you want this line putting?" asks said engineer.

Decisive as ever, T.Aldous springs into action: he rings Helminthdale to tell Milton that he needs to go down to Noddy to answer a technical question. Milton's come in by train today so can't drive down. "Which bus do I need to get?" he asks. As T.Aldous doesn't know and can't suggest how Milton might find out (Milton sitting as he is in an office behind the reference library and across the road from the bus station) he insists that Milton tells Jim to drop what he's doing and drive Milton down to Noddy. Which Jim does. And as T.Aldous insists on his sticking around while T.Aldous discusses where the line should go with Milton, and there is only one place in the end where the line can go -- and that's where I marked the plan with a cross fifteen months ago -- it's a dead waste of expensive time.

I wonder if anyone's ordered the 'phone line yet.