The tip

It is of course Friday and in our village that means bin-day. The fact that my beloved has forgotten to put ours out, for the umpteenth time, would be justification for me to create a big 'song and dance' (using our metal bin lids as percussion). However, the wisdom that comes to being married for so many years enables me to manipulate the situation to my advantage. For those who read yesterday's post, you will of course remember today is the big hedge cut day. By dusk the Landrover will be jam-packed full of hedge trimmings and I can suggest that a trip to the dump, along with bin-bags, makes amends for his fuzzy-brained forgetfulness.

For those who think I might be being a little harsh, you may not realise that a trip to the council tip is similar, in our household, to ones taken (by city-dwellers) to Ikea. It's not as if we scrabble around rubbish heaps like slum-dwellers, no we do very 'respectable rescuing'.

For instance I am sat on a walnut antique chair covered in a pleasant rusty velvet. This was handed over from one very cultured lady's car-boot to ours before it got to the skip. She obviously hadn't heard of eBay (not unknown in West Cornwall) and was delighted we could make use of it. The desk I sit at is solid mahogany and came from the Dental Estimates Board dumping pile (with permission), when all their executive staff were forced to sit at new, EU health and safety standard, plastic coated desks instead.

In fact half our delightful cottage is full of cast-offs. The piano was thrown out by a chapel, two antique mirrors have come out of skips as has the wood used to make my husband's work bench (thankyou Lloyds Bank in Frome for giving us your old door). There are rugs, chairs, tables all with a tale behind them. However, there is a ban on candlesticks; we have started to look like a stage set for a Dickens' novel. So who knows by the end of today I could be finding place for yet another piece of valuable 'rubbish'.