Thermal nighties needed

I'm back in Blighty again, an eleventh hour trip to complete the sale of my house in Essex. It all went ahead yesterday afternoon and so now, for the first time since 1993, I no longer own any property in Britain.

Arriving in England last Tuesday, the days since then have been taken up with packing up my belongings to send back to India and generally tidying things up. As part of this latter exercise, I took some bags of rubbish to the municipal tip on Thursday. Back in the old days you could go to the tip and chuck everything in the same bin - garden refuse, paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, timber. These days, you have to separate everything out. In addition to the afore-mentioned categories (all of which have separate skips), there are bins for fabrics, televisions, computers, washing machines and so on. Old engine oil has to be poured into a tub for old engine oil. There is one crusher which will accept all items not covered elsewhere, but woe betide you if you try to put something in there that doesn't belong. I managed to throw some polystyrene packing in there (why, oh why is there no polystyrene re-cycling bin?) but I was pulled up by the attendant when I attempted to throw cardboard in as well. ("That goes in cardboard, mate.")

In the end I had to pick through each of the bags and throw the contents into different bins, thus an exercise which would have taken five minutes in the old days, took half an hour this time. One of the refuse bags also split, spewing the contents across the floor of my hire car. As I picked through the rubbish, cursing the council for their obsessive green policies, I vowed that this would be my last trip to the municipal dump. Once I reached home I called up a commercial operator and arranged for a skip to be delivered onto my driveway the following morning. Sure enough, yesterday at 7am, the neighbours' early morning alarm call arrived with a huge crash, and into it - in a series of crescendos - went cardboard, paper, wood, metal, plastic, a TV stand, chair and two-seater sofa. The whole operation was over in less than half an hour; £130, thank you very much. How long though, before skips turn up neatly partitioned, and labelled: paper here, plastic here...

But it's been a good visit so far and I've met some old friends whom I've not seen for years. On Wednesday it was Gail, (friends since c1980, not seen for five years), and yesterday it was ex-brother-in-law day: Chandra (not seen for five years) and Barry (friends since school days, not seen for probably ten years or more). As for the weather in England, it's been miserable and wet for the most part but today it's bright and sunny so far and the clocks go forward tomorrow morning, a sure sign that better weather should be around the corner.

Originally published on Blogger on 29th March 2008