BINS!!

It’s all the fault of Tracey-from-number-three that I didn’t make it to Braintree tonight.

I’d had a couple of busy days and busy evenings, with friends round for dinner, a gig on the Sunday night, a very early game of golf on the Monday morning and a committee meeting on the Monday evening, so when I went to bed (quite late again) on Monday night, I was already feeling tired.

Our bins are collected on Thursday mornings and, like most places, our recycling and general rubbish are collected on alternative weeks.  The collections take place at a fairly civilised time in the late morning, and this means I have time to see who has put their bins out, which firstly tells me that it is bin day and secondly reminds me what colour bin I need to put out.  ‘Bin pressure’ has been ramped up over the last couple of years, though, with me having taken responsibility for Val-at-number-one’s bins as it is a bit much for her to manage these days.

I am quite proud of my 100% collection record since we moved into the village.  However, my success rate with the green garden waste bin is not so good.  The bin people come at a ridiculously early time – generally at 6.40 am - which means that I need to put the bin out the night before if I am going to have any chance of it being collected.

While I have responsibility for Val-at-number-one’s Thursday morning bin collection, Tracey-from-number-three has always looked after her garden waste collection.  However, Tracey has just moved away, leaving me also with responsibility for Val’s green bins (of which she has two).
The other problem is that there are only three of us on our road who have green wheelie bins, and Tracey-from-number-three has always been my marker.  Now, without her, Val-at-number-one and I are the only ones with green wheelie bins, so have ended up with sole responsibility for making sure all the bins in the road are out there on time.

All of which led to be waking up from a deep sleep at 3.30 am on Tuesday in a bit of a stew, remembering that I hadn’t put the bins out.  As I got out of bed to correct this error, Dr Cansfield told me, quite forcibly, that there was no way I could go out and assemble the bins at that time as I would wake all the neighbours.  So, I had to go back to bed and set an alarm for 6 am and then proceeded to lay anxiously awake for the next three hours, terrified that I would sleep through the alarm and miss the bins.

Fortunately, I did hear the alarm, and I decided to wait until the more civilised time of 6.30 am when I felt more comfortable taking the bins out (and was marginally more alert).  Afterwards, feeling a huge wave of relief, I returned to bed with a celebratory coffee for Dr Cansfield and a cup of tea for myself.  It was only a couple of hours later that I realised I had been 24 hours too early, and that the collection was in fact on the following morning!  So, after very little sleep and another busy day on Tuesday, I must confess I was too tired to head over to Essex.  All because of bloomin’ Tracey!