Christmas is over, long over, but now confined to the dustbin of 2012 by removal of the trimmings of the season… and pine needles, so many pine needles.

The house seems bare now and so dark with the absence of the twinkly lights that adorned the tree. It’s quite nice having my living room back and it’s like having a new room since I rearranged the furniture to accommodate Narnia.

If I was a lazy, good for nothing scummer, I’d leave my tree by the roadside and expect the refuse collectors to get rid of it… or I’d take it to nearby path that overlooks the river and throw it down the bank. But I’m not like that, I took it into the yard and dismembered it with secoteurs (however you spell it, those garden things that could lob off a finger) and sawed it up so it fitted into the garden waste bin. Opening the bin lid to fill it with bits of tree, I saw that some utter fucker had dropped a bag of dog poo into it. I wouldn’t mind, but there are four bins out there, including the one that it’s sort of ok for lazy bastards to drop their dogs’ poo into if they can’t be arsed to carry the bag to their own bin, which people often do.

Actually, I do mind. I mind a lot, but it’s one of the drawbacks of leaving the bins outside the yard, still on my land (moy laaaaaand!!!!), but accessible to locals who fancy dumping their crap in my bin rather than their own. Better than dropping it on the floor I suppose, which many people living in the flats behind my house do… because they’re a bunch of tossers.

So, I have four bins. I should feel special, but four bins? One for general waste (collected weekly), one for glass, plastic, cans etc, and one for paper (each collected fortnightly), and the garden waste bin, which gets collected at seemingly arbitrary intervals throughout the year.

We’ve come a long way over the past ten years or so in terms of not chucking so much stuff away and recycling things instead. Even stuff we don’t dispose of ourselves is recycled or disposed of safely (just look at the bill next time you have a tyre changed).

It’s made easier for us to do our bit by having separate bins for this or that, but even with these facilities, I sometimes rebel. Tonight, I admitted to my niece and my sister that threw a tin can in the normal waste bin last night because I just couldn’t be fagged to wash the bloody thing. I don’t compost either because it means having yet another receptacle to chuck stuff into and store it on its way to getting it out of my kitchen. Shampoo bottles? No, straight into the bin.

There aren’t many situations where I go against what some might deem acceptable: I stick to speed limits; I pick up my dog poo (and never put it in somebody else’s bin); I don’t queue-jump; I maintain perfect lane discipline at roundabouts. But sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to smile to myself as I say, fuck it, and throw a jar into the kitchen bin.

Waist
Good grief. Even the little dog’s waistline has been expanding exponentially during the winter months. I am going to start eating more green stuff, with the exception of mouldy bread… and green fruit pastilles… and green Haribo… and Night Nurse. OK, maybe I was kidding about the Night Nurse.

The problem with eating well is that you have to have a variety of things and I really struggle with vegetables. Even my meat and two veg rarely has any veg, usually rice. Pffft. I need another serious bout of depression and a return to the coffee and cigs diet, that’ll do it. Not sure it’d be particularly good for the little feller though.