I was sitting in a café waiting for my late lunch so I could go and visit the Palenque ruins before they shut.

Out the corner of my eye I saw a man reach up and start twiddling a bolt behind one of the traffic lights. Although he was at about the same height as me he was actually a long way off the ground because I was on a hill.

The lights were on an inverted ‘L’ shaped gantry hanging over the centre of the road. The whole gantry was moving about quite a bit because of the wind and him hanging onto it whilst undoing his bolt.

What made it more interesting was his seat.

He was sitting on the upside down bucket of a JCB excavator. The rear arm had been raised to it’s highest extent and he was sitting astride it with his legs dangling over the sides. Annoyingly, I didn’t have my camera with me.

After a few minutes he extracted the bolt and the whole coloured lens and hood rotated downwards and out of the way. He put his hand into one of his pockets and pulled out a new bulb. He wiped it clean on his shirt and reached up to grab the gantry. It was swaying about a foot from side to side above him. From the ground they don’t look quite so big but each lens was bigger than his head.

He removed the old and inserted the new bulb. I could see him smile with satisfaction as it lit up.

What made it more exciting was that it was raining.