Well it's back to the future and I'm spending more time with the family.
Actually I'm not as Mrs EotP works (thank God), one is in school and the other at University.
This means that me and the house are rediscovering each other all over again. That took about a morning and I can reliably inform you that there are no priest holes (though there is an unexpected gap where John the builder accidentally broke through the wrong internal wall two years ago with a lump hammer and I learnt a new word), no hidden cellars connecting the houses on the street up in some long forgotten secret tunnel, no bat colonies in the eaves and no asylum seekers living in the garden shed. We did have a Polish 'neighbour' living in our then neighbour's garden shed for a quite some time a few years back but then they were, shall we say, bohemian in their outlook. Sadly missed too since they moved, as it is not often that you bump into Ben Kinglsey and Kenneth Brannagh at someone's summer barbecue. Or have your garden fence set alight when a bespoke New Year's rocket made by a 'friend' in a film studio SX department fires horizontally and not vertically. How we laughed. How we dived for cover. How we wished we'd had an Anderson shelter.
I'm at home for a good proportion of the working week again. And doesn't some crap come through the letter box? In an attempt to be a reasonably environmentally responsible person I try and do as much as I can on-line. Y'know bank statements, payments, email, begging letters for jobs, virtual driving so I don't have to use real petrol, that sort of thing. But still stuff comes winging through.
My pet hate at the moment is/are collection sacks for clothes for charities. I can't say I've noticed these in the past - perhaps the kids picked them up as they came home from school and said 'Oh look letters from Estate agents saying they are desparate for properties just like ours/free newspapers/junk mail//actual mail here on the mat as I come in. Let me just pick them up and place them in a handy and accessible place where my beloved parents can review them later at their leisure and not be trampled by everybody else's muddy shoes.' You know I made that last bit up didn't you? Never, never have they done that - well of course. And, whilst I think of it, we have double the glass tumblers we actually need as the kids fill them with squash, partially drink them and them abandon them all over the house. I feel as if we should have them linked by a mechanism that requires a coin-in-slot to release them to encourage repatriation and not a game of parent hide and seek as we attempt to get them all back together.
These plastic sacks though. 'We are collecting for {insert Charity here} please fill with unwanted designer and famous branded clothes worn only once and leave on the doorstep and [Charity] will benefit with 0.000000001 % of the amount donated'. Ah, I see we are at home to Mr Sceptical today. This week, and it's only Tuesday, we've had two pushed through the door already. How many clothes do they think we have in this street? If I put something in each sack that came through, even if it was one sock each time, I'd be practically naked after 10 days and have run out of clothes. Look guys I'm a man and not interested in clothes that much, as Mrs EotP will endorse. If I can't order them on-line or chose within 1 minute of entering a shop then, frankly, I'm well passed my boredom threshold. What is the point of paying more than £10 for a pair of jeans? I mean Tesco sell them for £3 a pair and they last at least a week and fit where they touch. The instructions on the sack then tell you that 'they' are collecting on a certain day of the week and to leave them at the threshold of your drive just outside of the armed response boundary (neighbourhood just a tad concerned about security round here and the butler can only run so far).
And then...the sacks just sit there. For days. There seem to be three states of being for these sacks.
State A. No sacks on the street whatsoever. Ever. Doesn't matter whether the sacks have pictures of air ambulances, puppies, kittens or cute kids on them, no one puts them out.
State B. Nothing ever happens to them and they get taken back in surreptitiously by the householder, the way people do when they realise they've put the bins out on the wrong day and were 'just putting them at the front to give them a bit of variation in their bin lives before putting them away again and of course I know what day the bins come I'm not senile you know.'
State C. A nondescript dirty, white, battered Transit van with two lads in it races up and down the road grabbing the sacks and flinging them into the back of the van. Whether these are the official collectors or savvy opportunists who, like seagulls following a ship for scraps, just turn up on the appropriate day and grab the bounty before the official collectors arrive is not possible to say.
So into my recycling bin goes yet another unused plastic bag with a picture of a distressed horse on it. Could be a hamster but I didn't look too closely.
Or care at all.
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