Bin Day
My phone is full of one-liners, half-written chapters or blogs, and semi-baked ideas about all sorts of jumble. A lot of it is stuff I wrote down whilst drunk, and almost impossible to follow or read back!
I thought it might be fun to extrapolate these little idea crumbs, these moronic morsals, the wordy weirdness that flows constantly through my tiny mind, then post whatever they turn into.
They might go nowhere, they might be literary genius or comedy gold! (They won’t be!)
Anyway, here’s one below. Taken too far after I had to carry my wheelie bin to the street one morning …
Bin Day
“Fuck!” He woke as if being fired from a cannon barrel that he might have fallen asleep in. The sound was quiet but unmistakable, even to his slumbering grey matter. However, before he had time to register what his tired brain had instructed his even more tired body to do, he was halfway down the stairs, semi-dressed.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he said percussively, as the collection of bones he called ‘Joe’ bounced off the inside of his sturdy black front door, he found 2 shoes, struggled them on as best he could, and tumbling into the street, ran around to the side of the house. It was Friday. Black bin day.
Grabbing the bin, he pulled it onto its rubber wheels, straight into the front bumper of his car. The drive was narrow, the car wasn't, and the bin was marooned. He could hear the monstrous whirring of the dust bin lorry moving closer. He … Had … To do … something, his brain offering suggestions in its best Captain James T Kirk voice.
Dropping the wheelie bin back on its base, he’d contemplated lifting the bin over the car, but he missed the last black bin day as it was, its weight already seemed to exceed its mass and he didnt want to either put his back out, or get covered in 2 weeks worth of food waste and pizza boxes.
Joe ran back inside, retrieved his car keys, spun around, out, and down the side of the house again, frantically pressing unlock as he went. The car needed to exist, just 30 centimetres to the left to allow refuse receptacle egress. After 3 or 4 reverse, turn a bit, and forward cycles, he was out of the driver seat and trying again with the bin.
This time, success was in his sights. The whirring, louder now. Shit, he was cutting it too fine, he couldn't risk missing another collection, the bin smelled bad enough as it was, it wouldn't be long before it might end up as some kind of festival destination for rodents!
As the bin's base finally came to rest, heavily onto the pavement outside number 7 Winchester Road, the ‘truck’ came into view. Joe, standing in a pair of running shorts, on inside out, and backwards, both arms through one hole of a vest top, like some sort of Lidl Tarzan, his girlfriends Ugg slipper on one foot, and a large, used, letter-sized, jiffy bag on the other, watched as the small, dual-steering-wheeled, road sweeper minivan, crawled painfully passed the entrance to his driveway.
At almost the same rate, the driver's window started to lower. “Morning, it was Bank Holiday on Monday, pal,” shouted the driver over the loud drone of the brushes, motors, and suction emanating from what seemed to be everywhere on the little machine. “And?” replied Joe, “Bin days tomorrow,” the driver said while simultaneously giving him a lopsided smile, and a lopsided thumbs up. Just before the window returned to the closed position, He shouted, “Oh, nice shoes, by the way”.
Leaving the dustbin where it was, Joe returning to the house, and closing the door slowly, slumped back against it, looked down at his feet, looked up at the ceiling, then spat out one more very acidic “Fuck!”.
“Joe, love?” a distant voice rang out, above his head, “Bin day is tomorrow, I think, was a bank holiday on Monday… Only one sugar for me!”
Joe flicked off 2 fingers in the direction of the voice, kicked off the Ugg and the envelope, and went to make tea.
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
