I have remembered to put the bins out.

[contains mild swearing and scenes of self-delusion]

(Also, yay! I'm still alive.)

I put the bins out last night.

These are the minutiae of suburbia that I tend not to focus on. My life is simple - go to my lectures, do some stuff that goes wrong or makes me angry and then I blog about it. That's pretty much it - the bins don't come into it. Until now.

It was a difficult call - do I get up early and put the bins out? No chance. The regulations stipulate that bins must be out by 7am. The bin men are never out by 7am, but they might surprise you. If the bin men are out by 11am you're having a good day. I notice these things, I'm a writer, a blogger, an observer. They're probably out enjoying a breakfast at IKEA (block capitals, who knew? Not sure why.) or some greasy spoon down the block.

I put the bins out last night. That's foresight, preparation. If there's one thing I would have learned had I joined the army and been sent into battle, it's foresight and preparation. But not if I was Jewish - it seems they don't like foresight. Or pork. Strange.

I had to drag the bins through the ice and snow. Man, that was a tough three feet to the kerb. I had to inspect the bins - two collections in the morning. The green-lidded bins full of crap and the blue-lidded bins full of recyclable crap. I had to scrap the ice and snow off the top so as not to confuse the bin men. They're either up really early or they're tired from a large English breakfast. They don't like to have to do too much, you have to make it easy. Not too icy, not too far away from the kerb.

There's a new thing this week though. Not too full. The bin men, they don't like no full bins. They haven't been for two weeks what with the holidays, but it seems their new year's resolution is to act like twats. They won't collect a bin if the lid is more than two centimetres open. HEALTH AND SAFETY. "'I thought he was joking but then he got his measuring tape out and showed me" would be a classic quote in any other situation. A helpful (Tory pshht) councillor offers some consoling advice to fellow residents: "We accept that residents have more waste and we are asking them to assist us by taking extra bags to the [dump]." There is a problem, terribly sorry, but you sort it. Shysters.

And then, as I google the above news story to find a suitable link for this post I find another news story. My efforts, they are in vain. Why the shitting hell do I bother?