“You’re here at the wrong time. You’ll have to leave.” I’ve booked in to the dump on the wrong day. “My car is full. I’ll need it empty tomorrow morning and you aren’t crowded. Surely I can just empty it?” “You haven’t got a slot booked. The council could ban you.” “I don’t want to be banned. This place is going to be important in the next few months.” “Well you’ll have to drive straight through and come back at your allocated time.”
I ignore him. Dump man. I reverse into a bay and start the process of separating rubbish and putting it all in the right skip. It’s a meditation. They now take rigid plastic. Hopefully I won’t get banned by the council. It felt like the guy was on a power trip.
Most of the people who work in the dump seem to be alright. They are very mobile, winging through the bays silently correcting categorisation mistakes. Invisible in hi-vis, they help make sense of the filth. The digger operators are extremely skilled. They pick out mattresses like toys in a claw game, and they crush up the wood and cardboard to make room for more, always with an enviable precision considering the size of their machines.
I’m on a decent hourly rate from my friend and it is striking to me how I’m happy to work at that rate. I think I’ll need to pay some friends a similar rate to help me box up my flat. The thing that we have that she doesn’t have is the benefit of lack of attachment. “Those plastic coathangers will definitely be wanted by a charity shop.” Reader, I chucked them into rigid plastics.
There’s much still to do, and now it’s a working office with quite a few young men and women in there beavering away on spreadsheets, so it feels weird dismantling desks. Still, we are getting through it and running up against all the old familiar blockages. The one that I’m over now but I see in others all the time is the notion that items are worth much more than they are. “The pram goes to Christie’s.” It’s a nice pram. I’ve seen them sold for £300 on eBay. But I’ve also seen them go for just £50. If she’s expecting a couple of grand we will have to go round a few times before she accepts that it can’t command that at a last minute sale.
Still. I am doing what I can. It’s what I should be doing in my flat. I’m calling it prep…
AlBarclay 