Not Needed On Journey - Holiday Monday

The car is groaning on the springs again. I keep asking for the company to change it but it seems to have developed a mechanical empathy with me – I haven’t given it a pet name or anything, I’m not that weird, but I might miss its quirky character when they finally chop it in for something smaller, cheaper and sign-written with a company logo.

‘Don’t pick an argument with anybody will you.’ States my wife as the turning for the municipal dump approaches. I know the public opinion of estate agents isn’t stratospheric, but you’d like to think your missus would value you a little higher. After all we spend our lives listening to people wanting more than they’re worth…

‘They are just so aggressive and dictatorial.’ I tell her grumpily. ‘I mean where’s the customer service?’

‘They work for the council.’ She tells me. Fair point. No competition, heavily unionised and don’t need to make a profit was never the best motivator for a financially lean, successful operation.

‘Here we go.’ I announce as I turn into the depot and see they’ve added a further four or five skips since my last rubbish ordeal here. The boundaries have high, razor wire- topped fences and stark warning notices, referencing health and safety rules, items unsuitable for disposal and charges that will be levied for anyone trying to dispose of commercial waste, are everywhere. No wonder every country lane I go down is littered with fly-tipped tyres, washing machines and fridge-freezers.

‘How many public servants does it take to watch you struggle with heavy items?’ I ask facetiously, as I spot at least a dozen surly attendants in hi-visibility jackets following our approach with what can only be described as suspicion.

‘The trash Taliban have us in their sights.’ I tell my wife as I walk to the rear of the car and wonder what to dump first? It’s a wonder the dour-faced garbage guardians aren’t issued with Kalashnikov rifles.

‘Let’s hope they don’t realise you’re an estate agent.’ Says my wife as we both look at the opposition for sale boards I have in the car.

‘Do I look like one?’ I ask, gesturing towards my grubby gardening clothes.

‘Maybe an on-line only operation.’ She says chuckling.

Not funny. Plus they’re a false economy.

‘What you got there squire?’ Demands one of the two wardens standing by the steps of the general waste container. None of his colleagues have made any attempt to assist the people warily unloading their cars, despite me spotting at least two unaccompanied females and one old boy of pension able age struggling with an ancient typewriter.

We wait at the top of the steps like errant schoolchildren as our waste is picked over discourteously.

‘That’s for the wooden recycling bin.’ Instructs the more senior of the fascists, pulling out a worthless, pine compact disc rack. ‘And that’s for metals and that’s garden waste.’ He instructs, leaving my wife holding a sagging bin liner that she is told she must keep back, as she struggles to empty the remaining contents into the skip below.

‘Pompous pillocks.’ Says my wife angrily as we return to the car and I spot the polypropylene for sale boards of my rivals.

‘Welcome to my world, finally.’ I tell her with a wry laugh, as I wonder if there’s a deep hedgerow on the way home with a convenient lay-by alongside.

‘Old cathode ray televisions?’ I ask wearily, as my wife dumps the timber element of the for sale boards in the appropriate skip. I’m clutching my eldest son’s VHS/Television combi that a, no longer with us, relative bought him seemingly only yesterday. Everything goes back to the ground eventually - it’s just some items take longer to rot down.

‘You okay?’ Asks my wife as we drive away, the polypropylene advertising boards still in the back of the car. It’s no wonder women make such good estate agents. She knows.

‘It’s a bit sad round the back there.’ I tell her referring to the technological graveyard where, with a lump in my throat, I left my boy’s faded-blue 14-inch television set, along with my once prized Sony stereo VHS player.

‘Beer?’

She knows.

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Muck And Brass - Saturday

‘Do we have to do this?’ I whine ungraciously to my wife.

‘Sometimes you have to get down and dirty.’ She replies pulling on the rubber gloves.

‘But I’d rather watch the football.’ I tell her, wondering if my back will be up to this.

‘Put it on record and you can come back to it when we’re done. You never know you might even enjoy it in a weird way.’

So I stoop down and lift the up and over door.

I must look at scores of homes a week and have seen thousands over my, less than glorious career, but rarely do I see a garage containing a car. Yes, you get the occasional motoring geek who concrete paints the floor and has the whole expanse clinically clean and organised like an operating theatre. The type of obsessive oddball who stencils the shape of his tools on the wall where they must be re-hung after use and who organises half-used paint pots in colour coded order, pastels on the left, bolder colours to the right, gloss and white spirit on a separate shelf. But most garages are like mine, full of rubbish yet to go to the tip.

‘I might need that wood one day.’ I tell my wife half-heartedly, as another sneeze erupts from the dust dancing before my eyes in the watery sunlight.

She looks at me scornfully. My DIY skills, or lack of them, are legendary in this household, there’s nowhere to hang rusting tools on any of the wall-space here. In fact, the only hooks I tried to mount on the block-work are now lopsided, with one rawlplug protruding from an oversized hole, as a crooked stepladder hangs at an improbable angle. I’ll fix that later.

The six foot – approx two metres, but buyers should take their own measurements as figures are for guidance purposes only – piece of skirting, is duly posted in the back of my company car, alongside the old pine shelving, several spent bike tyres, a brace of obsolete computers, the once top-of-the-range Sony VHS recorder and my eldest son’s redundant cathode ray television set. Numerous other black bags are wedged in the load space as the car sinks ever lower on its springs. I’m only making one journey.

‘What are these, can we ditch them?’ Asks my wife holding up several hard drives from the spent computer towers. I may not be that handy with a screwdriver but I laboured to remove the old spinning discs from the once expensive machines. You can’t be too careful with personal data and I don’t want some kid in an African village seeing my log on details, or the history I built up before I realised how to, browse in private.

‘Need to keep those, Data Protection Act.’ I tell her officiously. It seems to work. Years of selling have taught me if you say something with enough conviction people invariably believe you.

‘What are these doing here?’ Asks my wife tugging back some big sheets of cardboard I’ve been meaning to recycle for half a decade. I colour up as if she has actually found my Internet search records. Three separate for sale flags, belonging to three different estate agency companies, one of which has gone bust so its board and logo might be worth keeping as a collector’s item, are dustily revealed.

‘Isn’t that theft?’ Scolds my wife as I bounce up and down on the wooden poles and try to break them into manageable sizes. The polypropylene flags aren’t so easily destroyed, I know they burn well every November 5^th but I’m already imagining the difficulty I’m going to have at the municipal dump. They charge for commercial waste and pleading one of the firms no longer exists, isn’t going to cut much ice with the officious waste control operatives.

‘They take down our boards all the time.’ I appeal in mitigation, as I try vainly to fold the fully waterproof, ideal for outdoor applications, fluted sheet advertising hoarding in on itself. Damn that stuff is robust. Not sure which dump bin it will go in, but I’m guessing a couple of millennium to decompose.

I wonder what the score is?

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