Friday, January 09, 2009

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.

4 comments:

  1. So that's what passes for entertainment in Norfolk, in lieu of cinemas, leisure centres and digital radio reception.

    Probably a bit of a hike from Bristol, but I'll bear it in mind for future family days out. If I see you, or indeed any other broadsheet journalists, creeping Stig-like over the dust mounds I'll be sure to wave, and so will my wife.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sounds much more fun than my local "dump it" site now called something in another managerial PC language.

    They even have lane/traffic control at ours, I have to fill in a questionnaire when I take the pickup as I could be "trade waste" masquerading as "public" you never know?

    Someone arrived at the back of the traffic jam for the "recycling centre" and was in a rush, got out and threw their rubbish at the gates, the manager came running out of his shed/office with a video camera and started chasing the car down the street.

    there is defiantly a sitcom waiting to be written here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I saw on the news last night that most of our crap goes to China. What comes around goes around...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ah the delights of the twenty first centuries equivalent of the water cooler. I suspect more liaisons are formed whilst hurling placky bags into the "receiving aperture" as the local brand new dumps hole in the wall is called in pure councilese, woe betide anyone caught chucking the wrong colour bottles into the wrong bin, into the stocks with them. Fortunate you are Bryan to have a happy team of dump operatives, our lot are a bunch of surly yokels. Turning up with a car load of empties can cause raised eyebrows, simply mutter "it's the wife".

    ReplyDelete