Where you Bin?

For the first few months of living in this house I was fooled out of bed several times by the sound of the rubbish cart arriving just across the road from my bedroom. I stumbled out of bed, almost dropped to the floor as my bad knee offers no assistance to the task of walking, or even standing for that matter, immediately after any kind of a rest. "Bugger, bugger, bugger" I chant as I know that I haven't put the bin out the night before and if I don't get down stairs pronto they will pass me by and it will be another two weeks before they take away the already stinky kipper that I found at the bottom of the fridge just after they came TWO WEEKS AGO!

So, I clambered back up the side of the bed, hobble over to the door and throw my dressing gown on just as I hear a beep, beep, beep emanate from the reversing rubbish cart. It sounds like it's reversing towards our back yard. So I set off with added momentum down the stairs in a race to beat the efficient Bin men, but with a caution as my knee hates going down stairs so I end up sort of walking side saddle, one step at a time giving me the appearance of Quasimodo descending the stairs in the tower of Notra Dame. Mumbling and cursing under my breath I head to the back door. It's raining. It always rained when I hadn't put the bin out! So I have to slip on my wellies. Bare feet in wellies feels very odd indeed and a kind of plunger effect occurs with every step causing a farty noise to sound out across an otherwise silent garden.

So you can picture the scene, I look a little like Paddington bear with my dressing gown as the duffle coat and my wellington boots on my feet I grab the wheelie bin wrestling it out of the back gate , making a fart noise with every step to the kerb where I defiantly slam it down.
HA! Beat the blighters!

Then I drag my self back up-stairs to get dressed and realise that the dust cart is still in the same place and actually when it moved it drove off out of the village leaving having only processed a handful of bins.
This is madness! I declare to myself, what an earth?..........

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This was on a Tuesday. My bins are emptied on a Thursday. Well it is all very confusing when you first wake up isn't it?
SO WHY DOES THE DUST CART drive into our village empty just 6-8 bins and leave, not returning for two days to finish the rest of the village's bins?

Eventually Andy, my neighbour right across the road and one of those select few that have their bins emptied on this preferential scheme, sheds some light on this anomaly.

Apparently the Council send out a smaller dust cart to do all the small tracks and lanes in the area, as it can reverse up the lanes easily. Sure enough the bins are collected from a small lane opposite us but I assume the dust cart has so many bins to collect that they now send a big cart to collect the bins, so it can't get up the lane anyway. As a result it just sits on the road whilst the dustmen walk up the short lane to get the bins. So effectively the whole point of its existence is nullified as the other dust cart could easily just pick up the same bins when it does its tour of duty

You see even the council have been infected by the infamous NFN virus!;'/\

Several months later I did exactly the same thing only to realise, as I fart walked out to the street with my recycling bin that this time I got out of bed for nothing, again, because all this dust cart took was the handful of brown, garden waste, bins.

I just stood there, in the rain of course, eye ball to eyeball with a dustman without a shred of dignity or any ability to save face, he knew that I knew that he knew that I thought he was the regular bin pick-up.

I sidled off sheepishly, trying to look as cool a dude as you can dressed in your towel dressing gown, in your wellies in the rain. I withdrew to the sanctuary of the walled garden and silently closed the gate behind me and all the dustman would have heard on the other side of the gate would have been a whispered "Bugger!".



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