When you are a king ...

A reasonably successful day, although I didn’t get half the things done that I wanted to. The home-check went well, and as long as I haven’t been spun a pack of lies, X seems a perfectly suitable person to have one of B’s pups. So that’s good. As I set off I saw a car with number 21 on its plate – the next number we were after – so that was good too. Now for 22. The weather was lovely, and I saw two magpies; another good thing.

A bad thing was that the recycling people didn’t take away my garden rubbish. I am psyching myself up for a discussion with the Council bloke responsible for this. Up until recently, everyone in the village was responsible for disposal of their garden waste. You could either make your own compost; buy green bags from the Council, and the dustmen would put them in a separate part of the lorry; or you took it to the tip yourself. Then to comply with Government targets, they introduced free green-waste wheelie-bins to everyone in the village, which would be emptied every fortnight. Except for the dozen houses down our road. We are the ‘wrong side’ of the old railway bridge, which isn’t strong enough to take the weight of the wheelie-bin collection lorry. So although we pay the same council tax, we haven’t been given the same benefit as the rest of the village; a situation which I think is unacceptable. I can’t for the life of me see what is fair about our being the only few people in the village who still have to pay to dispose of the garden rubbish. And when Mr Jobsworth at the council gets back from his month’s holiday I shall tell him so.

On a more positive note, we are going out to dinner tomorrow night. Ned and I will treat the Boy and his girlfriend, and probably Boy’s Best Mate and his girlfriend, to an Indian, after Boy has taken us to his local pub and bought us a drink. Tomorrow my baby boy hits 18. Happy birthday my love.