When I was a child, I used to hate getting my hair washed so much. I would roar the house down until I was pinned to the kitchen sink so my mum could wash my hair there as I howled like a sad wolf.
Weekends to me weren’t Saturday or Sunday, they were both allocated Hair Washing Days, and I dreaded them. I don’t dread washing my hair so much now - I just plan most of my swims around the blessed day - but I have begun to dread Bin Day.
To mark the end of one week and the start of another, the sad Sunday routine in my neck of the woods consists of everyone rolling out the bins to the street with a sigh, for Mondays are Bin Day. Anytime between 5am and - oh, I don’t know - 6pm, ours bins are picked up and emptied, and then rolled back into position. Their returned position (and time) is never precise, it’s thereabouts. Sort of. An inch past. Kinda. It’s anyone’s guess really.
My neighbours match the whimsies of the refuse collectors, not knowing when the bins will be upturned, so they allocate a full 24 hours to them being out, pride of place, in front of their house and on every single foot path across the land.
The industrial bin below is a particular nemesis of mine. While most empty can be nudged with the nose of my wheelchair, this bin cannot be budged. It’s so large and so prominent that it takes up more than half the bath, and on this bottleneck road, I have to get down onto the road and back up on the pathway multiple times a Monday. I hate this bin. I hate how pompous it is, just manspreading its way through life, not giving a damn about who has to walk on the road.
Most wheelchair users know the pathways of their surrounds inside out. Every crack, every missing brick, every repaving hack job by Eircom/Irish Water/the Council, and every sharp drop. Bin Day throws us off the scent, and we need to reconfigure and reroute. Sometimes it can leave us stuck on a path, but mostly it leaves us pushing other people’s filthy bins out of our way.
I’ve got bins on the brain for a number of reasons:
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