A Word In Your Ear with Roy Edmonds - Thursday, May 6, 2021

May’s here at last! My birthday month is always uplifting, specially as we’re now emerging from lockdown.

However, these birthdays mount up alarmingly. When contemplating age I have to mutter, like Victor Meldrew in One Foot In The Grave, “I don’t believe it!”

She Who Knows kindly pointed out in her newspaper, ‘Tell-tale signs you’re getting old’. It seemed encouraging, at first. No, I didn’t struggle with the TV remote; nor did I buy underwear at M&S – but then she pointed to the following, ‘Becoming obsessed with bin day’. Not only that, she ringed it with her pen then wrote, ‘And flushing drains!’

I should explain in our house we recycle or, at least, I do. There’s a shopping bag on the kitchen door for used plastics, metal and glass; a pedal bin for domestic waste, then another at the kitchen rear for cardboard and all those magazines and newspapers she reads.

Naturally, it’s me who physically empties these into our wheelie bins, while keeping a diary note to check if it’s grey-bin or recycling week. (While doing so I admit to grunting ‘ooh!’ when standing up, then ‘oof!’ when sitting afterwards. She Who, annoyingly, keeps reminding me to ‘straighten-up’ when standing - to avoid becoming hunched.)

Our bins are usually the first out and neighbours seem to follow suit, as once I got mixed up and everyone put out the wrong ones.

Alongside this weekly chore, I flush our patio gullies with buckets of water, since they got blocked by all the washing She Who Knows insists upon doing.

My old mates at the pub agree women are hopeless with bins – they won’t push down their contents to make more room, so they appear full again within an hour of emptying.

Sorry, that opinion’s clearly sexist. In fact, oh dear, I fear such outdated attitudes are another sign of ageing!

* For Roy’s books visit royedmonds-blackpool.com

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