Rubbish

Due to our long life in the world of antiques, we have long had a home rule that no further items can be brought home unless something is moved out to make room for the new piece. During our recent business restructuring we have lost storage space for old files etc. Initially Steve brought them home, so he said, as a temporary measure and piled boxes and boxes of ancient files into our garden shed. There they stayed during the winter and would have stayed forever had we been normal people.

But spring rolled in and we needed the bikes that were imprisoned behind the roof high piles of boxes. This has forced a rethink. We both decided that there was no option but to hold a grand sort out of every room in the house, as well as loft, garage, and shed. This has been in progress for some time now. Every week Steve has been digging away and filling the back of our car with an assortment of rubbish that was no longer wanted.

We have over our forty years together squirreled away so much useless stuff in our home, that we are at the point where the choice is; to knuckled down and sort the good things, from the things that have not been touched for years and that are obviously just taking up space and will never be used again. For a start we have a loft that is packed solid. There is a whole wall at the far end of the eaves that is entirely boxes of books. We cannot even get to that right now. This week Steve has been turning out the garage and this morning whilst I was otherwise occupied, announced that he had filled the car and that it was ready for me to take to the tip.

There, under a dark grey cloud hangs another story. Steve has been barred from the tip. This happened because he was witnessed on a couple of occasions, throwing the rubbish in the wrong pile. We all know that times have changed as far as visits to the tip are concerned. Everything must be placed in the correct container. There must be around twelve different stations at the Littlehampton Community Tip, as well as the recycling units and the containers for donations of clothing for charities.

It used to be a fairly pain free job to go and throw away the things that you have discarded. This year the council has implemented a new system and it has been firmly put into place in this area with complete disregard of the residents. The hours at our local tip were 8am until 5pm in winter and 8am until dusk in summer. The new system not only has much shorter opening hours of 10 am until 5 pm but the whole place is also closed completely for two full weekdays per week. That varies from town to town here abouts. With our closures being on Tuesday and Wednesday and with the tips eight miles away in Worthing or Bognor Regis being on other days. There is now a queue literally a mile long that starts before the opening time and in no time backs up to the main road causing chaos there as well .

It is not then surprising, that there has been and outbreak of fly tipping in the nearby countryside. That the formally efficient running of the tip has been forced by economy cuts to lower its standards is not an excuse at all, but it gives the obvious reason; because the less nice people in the community who have not checked on opening times before hand, and may have hired a van to dispose of their rubbish after home building works, and who then get to the tip and discover that it is either closed or that they will be charged an exorbitant amount of money; £4 an bag for rubble, will then just go and find a quiet spot to empty the van or their big car boot. It’s not right either way.

When I sort out any of the cupboards I carefully place the throw away stuff in order of the waste containers, so that when I open the boot on arrival at the tip, there will be any ordinary household rubbish from out waste bins easily reachable. Then behind that are garden sacks and behind that wooden items. Everything in its place, and a place for everything.

After Steve called me to say that the car was ready for me to take to the tip, my heart sank as I looked at the way it was loaded items of all sorts were just stacked in, all mixed up, which meant that instead of it being a five minute job when I got there, that it would take fifteen or twenty minutes to waltz around to the various distributions points. Today, including sitting in the queue listening to Classic FM to keep calm, this job took nearly an hour.

When I got home I was greeted by a sweetly smiling husband who asked me if I had had a nice time. I warned him that I was not best pleased with him and that he should save the jokes for another time since my first job was going to be to walk calmly to me desk and place him on the ‘Things For Sale In Littlehampton’ Facebook page. He looked crestfallen for a few moments and then asked if it was coffee time yet. My response was to walk up to him and stand in the nose to nose, toe to toe position and tell him that I did not like him very much at the time and it would be best to stay clear for a while. He asked if I was really going to sell him and how much was I going to ask. I told him that the wording would be, ‘Man for Sale, any reasonable offer considered, buyer collects’.