I just collected my bin.

I put it out at the end of the lane on Thursday evening and then forgot about it until just now.   No sweat.  I just wandered down in my slippers and collected it.  My little ramble did get me thinking though.

Going back over the years I used to have a problem with rubbish.  Some cunt took it on himself to dump his plastic sacks full of revolting shit over the fence into my North Wood.  These bags always split open on impact so that there was an mess of really nasty crap over quite an area.  I never caught him at it and I wasn’t going to root trough the rubbish in the wood looking for clues.

I had my suspicions.  There was a character up at the top of the land who had an obsession with The Manor and all who lived there.  For some unknown reason he declared war on us and dumping his rubbish was only part of it.  There was intimidation and attempts to wind the neighbours up against us.  I actually wrote about him all of fifteen years ago where I mentioned a few of his complaints.  I should add that while he speaks in generalities not naming names, all his complaints were directed at me and our property.

A few years ago, my friend up the lane died.  I think it was a heart attack.  It was probably caused by the undue stress my trees were causing?

Rather coincidentally rubbish suddenly stopped being dumped in my woodland.  There hasn’t been a single bag tossed in since.  One day a couple of years ago I hired a skip to clear some rubbish out of the garage.  I donned protective clothing and cleaned up all the crap out of the wood .  It was revolting.  Rather strangely there was a water meter there as well.  I kept that as a souvenir but all the rest of the sackfuls I collected went in the skip.

Life has been relatively quiet since then.  To the best of my knowledge no lorries have been damaged since, and I have had no reports of my trees attacking anyone.

As I collected the bin today I did check inside to be sure it was empty.  It wasn’t.  There was a small supermarket full of rubbish in it.  That doesn’t bother me.  It was just someone being tidy.

Or is the ghost of my friend trying to make a point?