Rubbish advice

Cursing myself, I rushed out of the house in my pyjamas. I’d forgotten to put out the brown recycling bin for the fortnightly collection. I lifted the lid on next door’s bin and peeped in. Empty. I must have missed the truck by minutes. Now I was in trouble. Putting the recycling bin out on Wednesday morning was my one and only duty while she was away and I’d fluffed it. She’ll do star jumps in the hall when she comes home and finds out.

Hoping there might be something I could do to salvage the situation, I rang the council office. The woman dealing with refuse collection enquiries sounded young and happy. I’d missed the fortnightly food waste collection, I said. Was there anything I could do about it? She was making a note, she said. It would be treated as a missed bin and someone would be along to empty it within the next three days. You misunderstand, I said. The bin men didn’t miss my bin. I missed them. I failed to get my bin out of the garage and into its usual position beside the road in time. My fault, not theirs.

In that case, she said, she couldn’t arrange a special collection. So what can I do? I said. She thought for a while, then she suggested I try to remember to put the bin out again in a fortnight’s time. But it’s mostly food waste and it’s starting to honk, I said. Wasn’t there anywhere I could dispose of the contents myself? I was willing to travel, I said. Hold on a minute, she said. I’ll have a word with my colleague.

When she came back on the line, she sounded amused, as though her colleague had agreed with her that I must be quite anal to be ringing up about such an unimportant matter.