A cunning tip

I never used to go to the tip. This is not due to any lack of interest in tips, but when you fill a car with junk, it leaves little space for taking the family as well. I did what women are supposed to do (don’t all write in at once, please!) and stayed at home with youngest Offspring, while eldest Offspring went along to help the Resident IT Consultant lift and chuck, or whatever you do in these places.

Remember, I never went, so I can’t claim any specialist knowledge. (Actually, it might have been my lack of driving skills which meant I was the one left at home…)

Then there are the ‘holidays’ in the other place. It, too, always has too much junk littering the house. There, too, the tip has been visited, when there has been a car. Same pattern. I never went.

They are fussy at Swedish tips. Everything has to be thrown away just so. The information sheet for our local mentioned the ‘kunnig personal’ who would be happy to help, in case you don’t know what your junk is, deep down.

(That means knowledgeable staff, btw.) The Resident IT Consultant quickly renamed them ‘the cunning men’ as they were always men, and they seemed fairly cunning. Or so he said. I never went.

He also had a real knack for finding the other foreigners (and this tip was in a field – I think – in the middle of nowhere) whenever he went. He always struck up some kind of conversation with men from Yugoslavia or Russia or wherever. Not much of shared languages, but they got by. The others were generally at the tip to pick up what they could find, so more cunning, I’d say.

Mother-of-witch used to work with someone like that. He was Hungarian. And the deputy head at school. Also very keen to take on other people’s junk.

But back in June I had my first break. We had so little rubbish that the car could also take a full complement of passengers. I got to go to the tip! I saw the cunning men! And, turning round, I caught sight of a Polish van. So there were the foreigners as well!

I have now been three times and consider myself an old hand. The last time I even went alone into the electrical shack, which is only slightly less dangerous than the hazardous bar.

But I do draw the line at sweeping the floor when done. I noticed someone else doing this. Because now I’ve been!

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