5864/18884
18888 even closer now. I hope none of you have bought me presents. I don’t want to make a big deal of it.
I returned from my morning dog walk/stone clear and noticed that the neighbours had put a package full of beers on their bin which was out for collection. How nice of them to get me something and surprise me that way. I drank them all straight away and put them in the recycling. The bin men would be so happy to see even more bottles than usual!
Not really. I realised that it was the last bin collection before Christmas and went inside, planning to put twenty quid in a Christmas card and sellotape it to the bin. The bins give me so much pleasure through the year and it’s only right that I reward the men who empty them, thus allowing me to fill them up all over again. It is literally the best thing about my life right now. Things tend to get a bit less exciting once you’re over 50. Or more exciting if you love putting things in bins and moving stones around and being drunk in your dressing gown. Am I right over 50ers?
Anyway as I tried to locate a Christmas card I heard the bin lorry pull up, so I dashed out with a twenty pound note and proffered it to the man who was emptying the neighbours brown bin. I don’t pay for my brown bin to be emptied. It’s for garden waste and I don’t have much of that so it didn’t seem worth he £40 a year to have it emptied (it used to be free). But I had assumed that the guys who did the recycling stuff had a section of the same lorry for grass and leaves. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. But it was too late the man had thanked me for my Happy Christmas and taken my money and moved on without emptying my recycling. Unless he was very unsatisfied with the tip I had tipped the wrong guy.
He knew he didn’t empty my bin, but he took the money anyway. I would have too. Why not? Maybe he’d share it with the other binmen later. Or maybe he wouldn’t even tell the other men on his truck about his windfall from the idiot who wouldn’t pay for his garden waste to be collected, but who would pay half a year’s garden waste collection as a tip to some men who don’t even empty his bins.
Was I going to have to tip again? Technically twice as I knew the food waste guys were different than the recycling ones. And were the recycling ones the same as the household waste ones who come next week? I wasn’t planning on leaving anything for the food men, even though they are definitely the most consistent visitors, though to be fair, they do get to feast on my food scraps every week for free…. I decided that I would also leave out some spare Beer 52 beers for the rest of the binmen. I put them on top of the bin in a box. There’s a chance they just thought they were recycling.
Anyway at least I’ve made a good impression with the binmen who don’t do our bins.
I still haven’t got over my lurgy and only managed about an hour’s work on the script before I had to call it a day as I couldn’t think through the fug. It’s great to have this hanging over me right now along with having to host our first Christmas. But you never know, I might manage it all. Or hope that my Christmas Eve Deadline equates to the same thing as January 2nd.
