Well, we're home again, our English home, that is! It's been lovely to be re-united with our family, and how 'Little Coco' has grown! He's like Pinnochio was at the end of the Walt Disney classic; he's a 'Real Boy', even though he's only 16 weeks.
The disaster is the result of my idiot memory! If I'd remembered how the remaining upvc was to be allocated from when I left it standing on the landing in August, I wouldn't have cut the wrong piece which left me a 45 inch piece short of finishing the rear windows. Of course, when I went back to the place which sells it, it was Saturday morning; and they were closed. Never mind, Monday would do. I wanted to get the rear windows finished before our friend from Luxor (Beverley, who now lives back in Dumfries) came to stay for a few days. It wasn't to be, though!
Here's the place:
I started the morning with good intentions, did I tell you before that our bins (trash cans, to our readers from across 'The Pond') have been stolen? Well..........we should have two 'wheelie bins' one for general household rubbish, and the other, which has a separate compartment within it, for different recyclable items. They empty one bin each week, alternating between the rubbish and the recyclables. I HATE IT!!!!!!!
Once upon a time, the binmen had a relatively strenuous job, heaving bins full of ash and general household detritus out of the backyard and lifting it up to empty it into the waiting truck. Nowadays, they wheel the bin (that's on condition that it's been put in the correct place by the householder, and the handles are pointing in the right direction with the bin lid fully closed, of course) to the back of a fantastically engineered and expensive 'refuse collector' truck, hook it onto the waiting contraption, and press a button! Because we are all being entreated to 'save the planet' by recycling, we now are required to separate all the differing types of garbage into different bins and boxes. Cans should be washed out, cardboard flattened, cellophane removed from window envelopes and tops removed from glass bottles, the list seems endless. And we don't get paid for relieving the binmen from these, their arduous tasks! No, in fact, our payments to the Council (whether rates, community charge, council tax or whatever they wish to call it) seem to rise exponentially, partly because of the cost of the fancy and extra bins, along with the fleets of fabulous new and complicated trucks, all of which must cost a king's ransom!
Seeing as we don't have bins any more, we've been slipping the odd bag or two into my mother's bin, or my sister's, but it's very unsatisfactory. Freda won't hear of paying £20 each for new bins, just for them to possibly be stolen again!
Feeling soft in the head, I decided to do the local authorities job for them, just this once, and separated and prepared all the rubbish, and then put it into Benjamin's car to take to the dump. I really felt quite 'public spirited'!
On arrival at the 'Waste Station' I politely informed the 'operative' that I had "A bag of glass bottles and jars, cleaned. A bag of plastic milk cartons, some flattened pizza boxes and two bags of general household rubbish." There are 15 large skips (dumpsters) standing around the edge of the yard. From past experience I know that there are some for ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, wood, electrical items, TV's and computers, obviously there are skips for allsorts.
I was utterly lost for words, absolutely astonished, when the operative said, "Put it in number one, mate."
All that enormous expense, and criminalising of people using the wrong bin for the wrong items, the 'bin police' of the popular press, the concealed spy cameras! All for this man to say, "Put it in number one, mate."
My disbelief was not helped by my mother's retelling of my brother's tale of being sure that he saw the binmen empty all of the communal recycling bins at his block of flats, into the same truck.
They're having us on, aren't they? This is all just another cunning plan to relieve Mr Joe Public of some more of his 'hard-earned'! It makes me want to vomit!
The disaster is the result of my idiot memory! If I'd remembered how the remaining upvc was to be allocated from when I left it standing on the landing in August, I wouldn't have cut the wrong piece which left me a 45 inch piece short of finishing the rear windows. Of course, when I went back to the place which sells it, it was Saturday morning; and they were closed. Never mind, Monday would do. I wanted to get the rear windows finished before our friend from Luxor (Beverley, who now lives back in Dumfries) came to stay for a few days. It wasn't to be, though!
Here's the place:
I started the morning with good intentions, did I tell you before that our bins (trash cans, to our readers from across 'The Pond') have been stolen? Well..........we should have two 'wheelie bins' one for general household rubbish, and the other, which has a separate compartment within it, for different recyclable items. They empty one bin each week, alternating between the rubbish and the recyclables. I HATE IT!!!!!!!
Once upon a time, the binmen had a relatively strenuous job, heaving bins full of ash and general household detritus out of the backyard and lifting it up to empty it into the waiting truck. Nowadays, they wheel the bin (that's on condition that it's been put in the correct place by the householder, and the handles are pointing in the right direction with the bin lid fully closed, of course) to the back of a fantastically engineered and expensive 'refuse collector' truck, hook it onto the waiting contraption, and press a button! Because we are all being entreated to 'save the planet' by recycling, we now are required to separate all the differing types of garbage into different bins and boxes. Cans should be washed out, cardboard flattened, cellophane removed from window envelopes and tops removed from glass bottles, the list seems endless. And we don't get paid for relieving the binmen from these, their arduous tasks! No, in fact, our payments to the Council (whether rates, community charge, council tax or whatever they wish to call it) seem to rise exponentially, partly because of the cost of the fancy and extra bins, along with the fleets of fabulous new and complicated trucks, all of which must cost a king's ransom!
Seeing as we don't have bins any more, we've been slipping the odd bag or two into my mother's bin, or my sister's, but it's very unsatisfactory. Freda won't hear of paying £20 each for new bins, just for them to possibly be stolen again!
Feeling soft in the head, I decided to do the local authorities job for them, just this once, and separated and prepared all the rubbish, and then put it into Benjamin's car to take to the dump. I really felt quite 'public spirited'!
On arrival at the 'Waste Station' I politely informed the 'operative' that I had "A bag of glass bottles and jars, cleaned. A bag of plastic milk cartons, some flattened pizza boxes and two bags of general household rubbish." There are 15 large skips (dumpsters) standing around the edge of the yard. From past experience I know that there are some for ferrous metals, non-ferrous metals, wood, electrical items, TV's and computers, obviously there are skips for allsorts.
All that enormous expense, and criminalising of people using the wrong bin for the wrong items, the 'bin police' of the popular press, the concealed spy cameras! All for this man to say, "Put it in number one, mate."
My disbelief was not helped by my mother's retelling of my brother's tale of being sure that he saw the binmen empty all of the communal recycling bins at his block of flats, into the same truck.
They're having us on, aren't they? This is all just another cunning plan to relieve Mr Joe Public of some more of his 'hard-earned'! It makes me want to vomit!
