Two of Andy Wilson’s posts on Facebook showing yet more digging going on his street

A MAN who claims his road has been dug up more than 30 times in the past three years has developed a “cult following” after posting about the constant disruption on Facebook.

Andy Wilson, who has been living on Hornsey Lane for almost 30 years, first started cataloguing the works on his street a few years ago.

“During the lockdown, I was just peering out of the window,” he said.

“There was a truck and a bus so I posted it on Facebook saying ‘this is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in months’.”
One week later, however, the excitement continued when more workmen came to dig up the road again.

Andy Wilson

Mr Wilson explained: “Then they were back a week later, so I put something else up, and three years later people come up to me in the street to talk about it.”

The works, primarily carried out by Thames Water, have now been dutifully chronicled by Mr Wilson.

“Whenever I see a sign or a workman, I now put it up for a laugh,” he said.

“It’s these Victorian drains,” Mr Wilson said. “What happens is that they find a leak, they come and fix it, and then another one pops up a couple of hundred yards away.”

He added: “People say to me, ‘you must know the workmen on first-name terms’, and I say I feel like I should be giving the keynote speech at the Thames Water conference.”

But Mr Wilson says the disruption caused by the works is not all fun and games. “On the serious side, there’s been a couple of Sundays when the street has been without water, and you don’t know when it’s coming back. They were handing out bottled water,” he said.

He said: “I could say it’s an outrage and its a disgrace, but in reality it is just a little bit of fun.

“I speak to neighbours and whenever we see each other we just shrug our shoulders, ‘it’s like groundhog day’.”

He captioned some of his photos on Facebook with wry observations: “Must be months since my mates have been here. Like me, I know many of you have missed them” … “And we were told the only things certain this world were death and taxes…”

A spokesperson for Thames Water denied that any works had been carried out in recent months, but did not respond to claims of ongoing disruption over recent years.