So this morning and last night I had the joy of dealing with the unfortunate combination of high winds and bin day. Whilst it is pretty minor compared to some of the other results of the weather, it still wasn’t an overly fun start to the day, nor greeting for getting home.

As well as being bin day, yesterday was also our recycling day, so all along the street, everybody had their two recycling boxes out. Unlike some councils, our recycling boxes are just open plastic tubs, which proves a bit of a problem for keeping stuff inside them in inclement weather. I came home to find our two boxes emptied and left on the kerb, but in the middle of our drive were two more boxes, surrounded by a large amount of plastic bottles, tin cans and bits of cardboard, with more of the same strewn all across our front garden. I couldn’t actually get onto the drive, so I quickly collected all I could into the boxes, and put them on the kerb too. The recycling collectors, like the bin men, now have a policy of not going onto householders property, so will only collect from the kerbside – this also seems to extend to situations like yesterday, where the boxes have fairly obviously blown over – anything that isn’t in a box at the kerbside is ignored.

Come this morning, the orphaned boxes still hadn’t been claimed, and more than that it was starting to act in the same way as a skip left on the road, as I spotted one of our neighbours chucking more stuff into it. As a result I decided that I’d remove the box from where it was, as any more wind would leave the contents all over our garden again. I picked it up and put it in our garage alongside our boxes, and if nobody comes around to claim them I guess we’ll put them out in two weeks time ready for the next collection.