A wasteful solution to a rubbish problem
Maurice O'Brien • Published 11 Nov 2011 09:30
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THE grinding noise beneath the car could have been something costly coming adrift or a particularly lethal bit of sabotage, either way in the darkness it sounded like bad news.
Having dropped to my knees to peer underneath, I was suitably positioned to simultaneously thank God for permitting such a late-night calamity, whatever it might be, to occur while pulling into my drive and not on the open road.
But further torchlight investigation revealed the problem to be a green, latticework container. Reaching in to free it, the first thing to emerge was a glossily expensive looking brochure from hard-up West Berkshire Council which has been whining for ages about not having money for day centres or child care and dull old stuff like that.
Then, swiftly putting two and two together, I twigged I'd run over my new food caddy, a clever subterfuge aimed at conning us into believing our true blue Pickles-free Tory council hasn't really scrapped weekly bin collections when it has.
Naturally I shouldn't have been surprised that someone had left it to be crushed in mid-driveway. It's already part of a regular ritual.
No matter how neatly and precisely everything's lined up for collection, no matter how close a double hernia hovers each time I put those newspapers out, one thing's for sure; arriving home in the evening, the recycling tubs will be lying several feet apart across the pavement, the bag for cans and plastic bottles drifting like tumbleweed, and both wheely bins abandoned at the top of the drive so that whatever the weather I have to get out and shift them, just to bring the car in off the road.
Now if this doesn't already bode ill for the future of this 'faddy', most weeks the waste operatives can't even muster the strength to complete the job.
One empty Kelloggs Frosties box came back three times during the summer until, when they'd eventually managed to shake it out of the recycling tub, I almost missed its cheery, if somewhat fading, little tiger face.
Apart from considering my caddy almost as offensive as the one who used to work for Tiger Woods, the council wants me to use it, in some airily hygienic corner of the kitchen, to store uneaten food, tea and coffee grounds, cheese and eggs, bread and pastries, meat and fish, and fruit and veg.
Strewth, shouldn't they be having words with Deadly Dave and Gormless George? If I could afford that lot you'd never catch me throwing it all away.
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