Occasional Scribbles

 I abandoned my blog ages ago so I thought I would post something lite, so to speak, to get started again.  Here goes…

I was pathetically excited this morning as I dragged myself from the depths of a lazy warm sleep because today was Rubbish Collection Day. It was the first thing that came to mind and I rushed out of bed, dressed quickly and ran outside to double check that the bins had been put out. This is not usually the first thing on my mind but having forgotten the last collection day, I now had two full bins, overflowing with lids nowhere near to closing and a number of black bags to go too. I also have highly strung, highly temperamental Bin Men.

My experience to date with the Bin Men has shown me that they can be utterly intolerant of any misdemeanours or incorrectly filled bins, that is to say, the lids do not shut due to over filling. They are not out on the road, fully visible so that one of the Bin Men knows to jump off the lorry to empty them and the Bin Driver knows to definitely stop outside our house. Or, worse than anything, there are Extra Bags of rubbish that won’t fit into the Bin and therefore must be actually Picked Up by a Bin Man and placed into the Lorry. And this is only the Rubbish collection. The Recycling collection is a whole other situation fraught with rules and wrong doing possibilities. The worst case for me being, An Inspection of my recycling items which has led to them being dumped on my drive as Non Recyclable and even the application of a Sticker onto the Bin with a Warning from the Bin Men and details of said Offence. There have been occasions where, extra bags of rubbish that are not tidily put inside the Bin, have been left behind. Bin Men do not take anything that is not contained inside the Bin. Oh no. Previously on these rare occasions, I have had to ask very nicely (beg actually) to have these offending bags removed and once, I had to ask if i could put them in the Lorry when the Bin Man said he wasn’t going to take them. I threw them into the grinding jaws myself.

I have spoken to these people in an effort to find out quite why they are so hostile to carrying out their job, which is after all, the removal of rubbish. I found that they objected to the way I was seemingly taking it for granted that they would take any Extra Rubbish left casually by the Bins. If I was willing to go out and ask them nicely (beg again), they would be more inclined to Pick It Up by Hand and dump it in the Lorry.  Their reluctance could also be because I have not included them in the Christmas tip department along with the postman, which may have resulted in me spiting myself by cutting off my own nose.

This morning, I knew I would have to be very ready to beg again since there were a number of Extra bags. I had prepared the family for this forth coming event, reminding them that unless we asked them very nicely, we would still have a bin load left after they had been and gone. As soon as I heard the Lorry coming, youngest son and I practically bumped into each other at the front door in the effort to go and humbly and apologetically get the Bin Men onside. At the last minute, I shamefully let him go ahead and watched through a tiny crack of the almost closed front door as he bounded cheerfully into the grinding jaws of death. Well not quite, but nearly. I watched him beam a smile and say a cheery hello and almost leap onto the Extra Rubbish bags and toss them into the Dustcart. Clearly he wasn’t going to ask the Bin Men to Pick Up the Extra Rubbish. He wouldn’t dare.

And what third world country are we living in? Oh yes England of course. Everywhere else, rubbish is collected, any rubbish, in bags or bins, any kind at all, sometimes daily. But here in England, we have to wait two weeks to be rid of it AND smile very nicely at the Domestic Waste Environmental Engineer Practitioner – or who we might refer to as a DWEEP.