Spring Cleaning

It's got a bit of bare-faced cheek to be called 'Spring' cleaning just now but, whatever it was, it was started with a huge carload of junk to be taken off to the Household Waste Recycling Centre (the Skip in old money).

It used to be a case of drive up, open the boot, deposit contents into the nearest stinky skip. Now, the barriers are down, you need a Passport to gain admittance, the be-overalled gatehouse attendant interrogates you about what the contents in each of the black bags are, then sends you on a snakes and ladders mission to carefully separate and place each and every unique material in its own pre-defined spot; "Drive around to the big bins with the wood, then come back around to the skips; five for the metal, six for cardboard, polystyrene in seven; bags of general waste to be sorted and taken around to the big green shed; textiles in the textile bank; tins of paint left next to the shed on the right.

Took us twenty minutes and a litre of petrol.

To be fair, I have absolutely no problem with that, and on leaving the site the large sign proclaiming that the Wee County recycled 84% 0f its collected waste last month is pretty impressive. We've gotten quite used to sorting out all of our waste into the various coloured bins and, as Samantha says, it's strange when over in the next district everyone still bungs stuff together into the one bin.

Afterwards, we headed off to take a walk out over the wetland and watched Roe Deer try to hide in the long grass and Kestrels dodge power lines whilst at the same time being absolutely forgiving about the fact they were right next door to a smelly recycling, waste and land-fill site, criss-crossed with huge electricity pylons.

The light up on the hill where Clackmannan Tower sits was nice too.