The baby and the bins

09:20:2004
The house is full of food. Good stuff, too, not the crap we usually eat.

Getting a lot of favours thanks to --y. -------e and ----f are doing some hitherto neglected bits of housework that I would never have got round to doing ever, like cleaning the hinge on the oven door with a q-tip, or replacing a rubber O-ring inside the coffee machine's steamer mechanism that I didn't even know was there. It seems what they say is true: you learn a lot of things being a parent. It's just that by the third kid you've pretty much learned everything about parenthood and are now learning about the workings of the thing that shoots steam out of your coffee machine- albeit by an indirect route.

The cats have been at the bins again. At least I assume it's the work of cats. Might be a fox. Whatever it is certainly likes chicken. I've tried smearing fairy liquid on the chicken bones but it might as well be mayonnaise.The obvious answer is to buy a bin. A plastic one, as ----i has an aversion to metal bins (I've stopped asking). The main problem is that the closest place that sells plastic rubbish bins is about 10 minutes walk down the high street, or 15 minutes carrying a bin. I pass the place fairly often and I have seen the same bin outside the place every time. It is chained to a metal incinerator, a tartan shopping trolley and a crap suitcase. The same four items are there day in and out, in sun and rain, like a sort of camp x-ray for large household goods- and they're beginning to look a bit tatty. So if I ever buy this bin I'll know that it has been outside already for X amount of time.

Now I know these things are supposed to spend their lives outside, but I ought to get a discount on this display model. The thing is I know the proprieter of this hardware/homeware shop (which is a good one and stocks everything in the world) can be a grumpy bastard. He never gives receipts and once sold me two fan heaters which killed an extension reel before comitting suicide. I never even tried to get a refund because I'd never got a receipt and although some people may like to operate on a casual basis I was convinced that he'd suddenly start quoting trading law and have at me with one of the sharp tools within his reach.

The problem is, it's a very good hardware/homeware shop and it's the closest one to the house if you don't count Woolworths which is a fucking nightmare place which never, ever, has what I'm looking for and is full of evil people.

SETI have stopped their surveillance of me which is nice. Obviously I'm not very high on their priority list right now. I expect they're concentrating more on David Hasselhof these days, who is in town to do 'Chicago'.


[ Back to the Public Albatross System]