Talking rubbish
There is a company that collects our rubbish.
They have a rather complicated system where they collect bottles on certain weeks, recyclables on other weeks and the rest of the shit any other time. I could never get the hang of which day was the day for which shit.
I don’t know why they can’t do it like the French. The French have a brilliant system where they have these little collection areas that have several large coloured bins. Any time you feel like it, you can throw all your crap in there and someone comes along and collects it, but it doesn’t matter a damn when they do it, because you have already gotten rid of your junk. That would be much too complex for our mob though, and if you miss the collection then that’s tough.
I don’t know what the hell they do with all the tons of crap they collect, but I have a sneaking suspicion they ship it off to China or somewhere where they convert it all into computers or politicians or anti-smokers or something else befitting its origins.
Just to confuse their complicated system of rubbish collection, they decided that they weren’t going to collect it on the appointed day any more, and I can’t remember which days they are collecting what and when.
I got a letter from them a few weeks ago. They apologised for the complexity of things and said they had new cutting edge technology that would see me right. They said that if I gave them my mobile phone number, that they would text me the night before a collection and would tell me what kind of collection it was. I phoned them and got chatting to a very nice girl. I gave her my number and told her to text me when a collection was due, or phone me whenever she felt like a shag.
I’m still waiting for a text.
Or a phone call.
In the meantime, my rubbish is building up at an alarming rate in a great heap at the bottom of the garden. The pile is festering and steaming. It is starting to make gentle undulating movements. I am going to have to revert to chucking it into the neighbour’s garden, and I am going to have to do that soon.
I have this fear that it’s going to start talking to me.
The pile could be the Thrash Heap, a character from Fraggle Rock
Here at my apartment complex we have the french system. there is a central area where we put trash in a big dumpster and cans in a small one and bottles in yet another small bin. When I lived in a house we had the garbage nazis picking up on Mondays, sometimes. We also had to separate all the different recyclables into different colored bins but at least we put them all out on the same day. If you got some mixed up then they wouldn’t pick up anything from your house. Assholes! I prefer the system we have here like the french system.
Becky, I loved Fraggle Rock
Becky – Or Trapdoor? I was a great fan of that!
Brianf – I suppose there is an argument against communal bins in that people without cars may have problems. In an apartment complex it’s fine, but the French ones tend to be tucked away in discreet spots in the countryside.
Jasus Grandad, http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/91584/91584,1191129031,1/stock-photo-a-pile-of-waste-including-discarded-tires-plastic-and-other-waste-5738125.jpg
thats an aweful fucking mess. I think its too late for coloured bins. Try the Naas, Co. Kildare solution. Fuck a lighted match in and let some other poor bugger sort it out.
“DON’T YOU OPEN THAT TRAP DOOOOR..YOU’RE A FOOL IF YOU DARE” Loved that show as well.
I throw my garbage off the deck and into the trees at the back of the house. The ‘coons, rats, coyotes and possums take care of the perishables and ‘the people that live in the woods’ take away the rest.
Slab – If it weren’t for the lack of trees around the place, I would swear that was my gaff. An uncanny resemblance.
Becky – G’wan…. take the rest of the evening off.
TT – We have a lot more in common than you care to admit.
No rubbish collections here – just take it to the nearest bins. There is supposed to be one bin for ‘recycling’ and one for the rest only that one gets full pretty fast so in practice you tend to use either. That’s always supposing the bin emptying men have been paid – otherwise they’re on strike again and you just dump it as close to the bins as you can. Occasionally when the council is particularly broke the rubbish blocks the road!!
Grandan, I hope it’s not true that they’re shipping out all the Irish junky stuff to us lawabiding quiet folk here in China. We have enuff rubbish of our own to dispose of as it is. I lived in a block of flats in one city some years ago and left all my kitchen rubbish in plastic bags at the entrance to our apartment section (they have thousands of numbers, just to help everyone feel like a number) and within minutes there was an auld wan rummaging for disposable cans and plastic bottles. In an open unlandscaped area between highrise blocks a group of four or five people employed themselves (a few might have been residents) sorting plastics, cans and dry paper into heaps. These were then taken in carts or hired vans to factories around the city and sold by weight. This is called socialism with Chinese characteristics, I gather. Capitalism with Irish characteristics is also known as the brown bag economy, and presumably the cutehoors learned to recycle brown bags (?) But don’t reveal such recycling secrets to China please.
For thousands of years China had nightsoil collectors in its bustling (polite word) towns and cities who went around collecting human excrement and then carting it out to the periurban farms for sale as ready-to-use compost.