Looking into the hole at Irish Water

A REGULAR feature in engineering works is “looking into the hole”. This involves a group of often highly educated engineering personnel peering down a hole in the ground and thinking.

They think about the secrets held within the hole, or the problems with the hole, and how you might go about addressing them. Sometimes, the thinking is concerned with the wonders of the hole, how it was created and whether it is a good or a bad thing.

Often, there is a man down the hole, working, while those above are doing their thinking. The thinking is done behind faces that convey the depth of thought being undertaken. And then everybody drifts away from the hole, spent from all that hard thinking.