There is a man

There is a man standing in the gutter across the street. He has a basket of plastic pipe fittings at his feet and he is looking perplexed.

For the past week, a white van with long pipes strapped to the roof has appeared at 8:30 am and parked outside my office window. Two men, one youthful with fashionably frosted hair and an older man who is probably the boss, have alighted, taken out tools and proceeded to perform mysterious work on the hillside drainage systems of the houses across the way.

Today they are peering up at the elbow joints that peek out from the wall. Judging from the things they've taken out of the truck, they plan to build a channel from the elbows to a streetside grating if they can figure out which fittings to use.