The Dump

Pesky work has got in the way of blogging. It's also stripped my mind of coherent or original thought. It would be much easier to blog if I worked at the Wells-next-the-Sea Household Waste Recycling Centre. I have spent many happy hours there of late, discussing the finer points of what can and cannot be put in the various skips - no aluminium in the metal one, who knew? And paint, that's a real brain teaser. The staff are invariably amiable and funny - though not as funny as the guy in red overalls who put a plastic bowl on his head and shouted, 'Nanoo, nanoo!' after me. He seems to have gone. He used to decorate the place beautifully as well, using the flags, plastic flowers and soft toys that people always throw away. Great man, good eye. Now it's all streamlined and efficient and closed at times it never used to be. It was a riot just after New Year, packed with people in Barbours smashing embarrassing numbers of bottles into the weird-shaped - torso of a Dalek, basically - 'banks'. One Land Rover turned up towing a whole trailer load. How we laughed.  Recycling used to irritate me and I'm still sceptical about its environmental credentials, but, somehow, I have internalised it as a way of life with its own little consolations. There are three - the staff, the joy of virtuously smashing a big piece of metal into the right skip and the opposing joy of sneaking a bag full of recyclables into the non-recylables skip because you can't be bothered to unpack it. The Wells guys caught me at this when I was just about to swing a black sack containing paint into this skip and it burst, leaving a big, friendly dollop of mint green on the ground. I gave a Tony Blair 'Aw shucks, you got me' smirk.  It was enough. This delightful dump is on Warham Road if you ever feel like a spot of happy downtime. It's much better than Newsnight.