Set in the bus lane

Left early intending to have a blood test done, and then remembered about the hill that is Franklin Road. I don't have the energy for riding up that hill. So I came home early.

Park Road is the road on which the Auckland City Hospital is. It can be diabolical to get into the hospital grounds (in a car) in the middle of the day, and even worse to drive home after work, especially a wet day. As this one has turned out. Which was a second factor in deferring my blood test. I was getting significantly wet.

But, I remembered the manhole cover I've ridden over for the past three years that I've been riding home from the hospital. Never noticed until the last couple of months. And not actually seen until the last couple of weeks.

Seen in that I had become conscious of the centre piece. The design, and the letters strongly suggest that this is a Ministry of Works piece of cast ironware. Did the MoW actually manufacture this and others like it? It's more likely that the MoW got a job lot from a foundry somewhere. 

Placed where it is, it is highly probable that this particular manhole cover is rarely used to go below ground level. Subterranean pipes and the like will probably have been replaced, upgraded, increased or decreased. Because with all the new building on the Auckland City Hospital site, and across Park Road the Medical School buildings (still being added to), pipes that were adequate when I guess that this was made would be totally inadequate now.

Although ... other seemingly old covers have been sealed by the new tarsealing of the road, spreading carelessly across them. Maybe there is something under there. Maybe it's Auckland's undercity; something novels suggest London (for example) has.

Time to take my tasting glass of Sangiovese back to #3 in the Jackson Lamb series.