| The
Dance of the Wheeliebin
Well, I got myself into a right
pickle tonight! We have a wheeliebin, you know, a big dustbin
that you have to push to the front gate the night before the bin
men come. Now the trouble is this wheeliething isn't big enough
for all our rubbish. I can't take stuff to the dumpit because
of the fascist discrimination against van drivers, and in any
case I'm banned for life after I made a stand (I'm banned from
Asda and the Royal Oak as well for making a stand; jobsworths
don't like it when you make a stand) so we really have to cram
as much into the wheelie as we can. Now you might laugh, but what
I do is climb into the bin and jump up and down on the rubbish.
I usually do this when I finish work in the workshop, which can
be about the same time as the pub next door tips out. So I'm quite
used to passers by shouting comments when they see me dancing
in the wheelie. Typically, I might get “I see she’s
put you in your place!” or “Feeling a bit down in
the dumps?”
Tonight
things went very badly. I usually jump up into the bin without
any trouble, but this time I forget to move the bin away from
the house so I hit my head on the wall. Once in the bin, the first
indication I had that something was wrong was when my feet felt
very heavy. At first I just put it down to my age. I mean, I think
I’m doing quite well jumping up there in the first place,
never mind the dancing, but eventually I just had to stop. My
feet were like lead. My method of exiting the bin is to take one
foot out and hang it behind me, then allow the bin and myself
to fall in that direction. As we descend I skillfully land on
my back foot then jump out, at the same time restoring both my
own and the bin’s verticality. If passers by are present
I might then give a theatrical bow. But this time the maneuver
went badly wrong. I got the back foot out all right and landed
quite well, but the front foot wouldn’t move and I hopped
around with the entire wheelie attached to my leg. Unlike the
passers by I soon tired of the comic potential of this so I pulled
hard, and half the contents of the bin came out on the end of
my leg. This was obviously a good bit of business from the comedic
viewpoint because the audience (as it now was) roared with delight
as I clumped round the yard swearing. It seems that some polystyrene
packing material in the bin had reacted with the contents of an
aerosol, punctured by my dance. The result was a mass of sticky
foam.
The aftermath was that I was banned from the house until I had
been thoroughly scrubbed. Yet when Ginger, madam’s favourite
cat, came in tonight absolutely black bright, he got a nice blanket
to lie on. Ah well. I know my place . . .
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