Midway through my pruning session I realise I am cutting the wisteria up into really neat pieces.
I mean, seriously neat. Each branch is carefully chopped into three and then placed in a garden waste bag. I do the same with the ceanothus until I have filled both my regulation green bags. Then I stand in the bags and squash the branches down to make things even neater. I sweep the pathway and put the leaves on top and rearrange them to make the bags match each other. I spread equal quantities of leaves evenly over the chopped-up branches and stand back to admire my handiwork. These must be the prettiest two bags of garden waste in all of Balham, I think. I swell with pride looking at them. I worry slightly that my tendency for obsessive compulsive disorder is getting out of hand again — like the time I realised I was lining up all the mugs in the dishwasher so that the handles faced outwards at the same angle. But I reckon that when it comes to putting waste out for removal by the council you cannot be too obsessive, or indeed compulsive.
I check the bags again and feel a strange sense of apprehension as I begin to attach my shiny new garden waste removal permits to the handles. I’ve had to jump through a few hoops to get hold of these babies. I had to ring up and register. It is now £25 a year for the privilege of putting a small amount of garden refuse out for collection once every two weeks through the summer months, as the impressively rude girl who sold me the permits over the phone explained. They will not automatically renew, so I will need to re-register every April. If I didn’t want to buy one of these stunningly bad-value permits, I could always put my garden waste in my car and drive it down to somewhere called Smuggler’s Way. ‘Yes, yes, whatever,’ I say, ‘just sell me the seasonal protection racket.’ So now I’m looking at my two permits and wondering how in the name of all that is holy I am meant to peel off the backs and attach them to the green canvas bags without violating a rule that will invalidate them immediately.
In the end, I stick them around the handles in a way that I am sure will result in someone somewhere deciding that I do not deserve to have my wisteria pieces removed humanely.
I put the bags out the night before collection day and say a prayer. The next morning I dare not look. I peer out of my window every time I hear a noise. I even stand on the sofa at one point to see if the bags are empty or full. It is like waiting for Santa Claus in reverse. In the end I cannot stand it any longer. I go out and find that they have emptied only one bag. The other has a huge warning notice attached to it bearing the eight scariest words in the English language: ‘This bag contains items which are not recyclable.’ I look inside and can see nothing apart from the neatly chopped-up wisteria and leaves. I stare and stare. Why this bag and not the other bag? I examine the bag for a really long time before I see it. On the right hand side, just beneath a piece of wisteria, there is a tiny scrap of silver paper and next to it a slither of cellophane, barely visible to the naked eye. It looks like the type of random street debris that must have drifted from a fag packet when someone unwrapped it as they walked past. I ring the council. I explain that the piece of paper in my bag was two centimetres long and the warning notice they have put on the bag telling me about it measures six inches. I try to persuade them that this cannot be good for the environment, but they do not seem impressed.
‘They are very strict about these things, madam,’ says the man with the standard issue strangled syntax. He tells me that he will have to log a ‘mis-bag’ on the computer.
‘Oh god, no,’ I say, ‘I don’t want any trouble.’
I start wishing I had just set the rabbits on the garden waste. They could have probably removed it after three weeks munching. ‘The situation will now be rectified within 24 hours,’ he says officiously, and he makes me take down a reference number. I ask what this all means and he tells me that they are coming to take away the bag. I’m not convinced. I think they may be coming to take me away instead.
Melissa Kite is deputy political editor of the Sunday Telegraph.
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