Right.... I want to gripe at you about rubbish. Not I don't mean I'm going to waffle for 5 minutes, I'm talking about refuse, or more accurately, refuse collection.

Now, I'm not knocking the refuse guys for one minute, they do a great job and (most of the time) they turn up on the right day, so no complaints there. No... my moan is with the council.

When we moved in to our shiny new home it came fitted with a dustbin cupboard - "what a great idea", we thought. "That will keep all the smelly rubbish out of sight and the foxes and badgers (yes, we have badgers too) won't be able to get at it. "
Our delight was shortlived however, when less than three months after moving in, the council adopted a 'collect at the property boundry' policy. OK, we thought, that's a pain in the arse and kind of makes the cupboard redundant, but we can live with that. So we started leaving our rubbish at the bottom of the drive.

Then, this Christmas, the council posted their revised collection times for the holiday fortnight. In very small letters at the bottom, it said "and then fortnightly thereafter". Great! Slipped that in rather slyly, didn't they?

Now the logic behind this is that if households recycle their rubbish, the remainder won't be much and probably only needs collecting every two weeks.
So the following week I ring the council offices and ask to join the pilot recycling scheme. This involves being given two plastic bins - one for cardboard and paper and the other for plastic and metal. Whilst on the phone, the dazzling receptionist casually mentions that we have the dubious honor of being added to the Wheelie bin list, "...but not until next year". My mood slumps. I've heard all about wheelies. They only collect once a fortnight, if you want the larger one you have to pay and anything that doesn't fit in the bin doesn't get collected. "Oh they're not that bad", she chirps. Yeah, well tell that to the thousands that use and detest them.

The recycle bins arrived nearly two weeks after I requested them, so I put them straight to use. They're not very big, so it didn't take a lot to fill them - in fact they filled up rather too quickly. One week later and they were stuffed. Again, they're only going to be collected once a fortnight. Now it appears at the moment like they are stilll being collected weekly, which is great. I can just about manage that - but fortnightly? That's hardly encouraging me to be green, it's about 3 miles to the refuse site and that involves me driving a smelly car and contributing to greenhouse gasses.

Now you've heard the phrase "great idea in principle", I'm sure. I think here's another good example of that phrase being put to use. Make us 'green' by all means, I can even live (*gasp*) with the wheelie bin if that's how it has to be, but please don't subject us to fortnightly collections, smelly bin cupboards and frequent trips to the refuse site.