I received a phone call on Monday.

It was from the crowd who collect my bins and they wanted me to put my bins out on Monday night.

I thought this was a little odd as I normally would put my bins out of a Thursday for collection on Friday morning.  I mentioned the fact.  She said it wasn’t for collection, that they just wanted to check the bar-codes or the built in chip or something.  And apparently it was only my bins they wanted and no one else’s.

That was fair enough.  I had a shrewd idea why they wanted to check my chip or my bar code – it was probably because I rarely put the bins out, and they probably thought that just because everyone else puts their bins out every week or two, and that mine was only registering every month or two that something must be wrong.

We have a system here that pays by lift.  The more often you put out your bin, the more you are charged, so I put out my bin as little as possible.  My rubbish goes into various places such as the local landfill, the local ditches and the neighbours garden.  Or else it goes up in smoke.  But there are things that really shouldn’t be dumped such as old batteries, used bulbs, paint tins, used oil, explosive material and the like so they go in the bin.

I put out the bins as requested, and wondered what the neighbours would think.

Yesterday I had to go out.  As I drove out past my bins I noticed they had been joined by two others.  Obviously someone had thought I had insider information on a special collection so they weren’t going to be left out.

While I was out, I had to spend a while waiting for Herself.  About 90% of my life seems to be spent waiting for Herself so there was nothing new there.  I had walked Penny around the block and was sitting in the car patiently waiting when I thought of the bins.  I phoned the company and asked if they had worked on them yet.  She said she hadn’t a clue and would check and phone me back.

Naturally she phoned as I was driving so I had to stop the car.  It caused one hell of a traffic jam but the law is the law?  She told me they were just about to do the work.

Driving up the lane, I noticed there were now six bins.

Later on I decided to wander down and retrieve my two bins – one of which was empty and the other full to overflowing and drag them home.  I had to extricate them from the ten bins that were now blocking the lane.

I had a cheerful call from the bin company this morning.  They wanted to confirm that my bins had been checked and were in fine fettle and they thanked me for my trouble and cooperation.

I haven’t dared look out on the lane today.

It’s probably impassable.