The gloves are off at Christmas
I don’t care if it is Christmas – the gloves are off and I’m fighting back.
I’ve tried a softly-softly approach, given people the benefit of the doubt, hoped they would see the error of their ways. But it’s been to no avail and I have resolved to take direct action, just like the mad airport protesters at Stansted.
In my case, there is no requirement for bolt cutters, superglue, unwashed hair and a dog on a piece of string. That’s because the frontline in this battle starts right outside my own Edwardian bay window.
All is far from quiet on the home front and the reason is this: my neighbours keep leaving their smelly old rubbish bags outside my house when it’s time for the weekly collection. I know, it’s unbelievable. Ghastly, simply ghastly.
By late tonight, the pavement outside our house will resemble the municipal tip. Instead of leaving their bags in front of their own homes, the majority of my neighbours – and yes, I know who you are – will have deposited their weekly detritus, slap bang under my nose.
Inevitably, one of the local cats, or a fox or rat, will rip into one of the bags during the night and scatters rotting veg, soiled plastic containers, yoghurt pots and generally whiffy stuff over the pavement.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that we have a lamppost outside our house, although why this should act as a magnet for other people’s bin bags I have no idea.
The problem started a few years back. First one neighbour tried it on, dropping his crap outside our house under the cover of darkness. Others followed. An unambiguous letter from my wife made it clear this wasn’t on and the problem appeared to have been nipped in the bud.
But old neighbours moved on and a new crowd moved in. The old ways surfaced and I have been left cleaning up other people’s crud.
Last week, some joker dumped a large piece of plastic sheeting, which the bin men refused to take away (because it wasn’t in a bin bag). Over the course of the next few days, every dog that walked passed the lamppost had a sniff, lifted a leg, and left a stream of wee cascading down the plastic into the gutter. The only saving grace was that the immediate area was de-iced during the cold snap.
No doubt some neighbours will claim they are making life easier for the bin men by putting everything in the same spot. It’s purely coincidental, of course, that the location happens to be outside my home, and not outside theirs.
I have retaliated by putting my bags outside the offenders’ homes. Revenge is smelly.
