A Gay Garbage Man?

First night in the new bed. Buddy slept in his bed at the foot of the new bed, he seemed to be staying there and not jumping up onto our bed. I woke up at 5am for a piss and there he was sleeping between us on our bed.

The new bed was nice to sleep in, finally the Tempur mattress has the correct slatted bed base to lie on.

Sam headed to work. He called Buddy as he headed downstairs and Buddy followed, so did I. 8am is as good a time as any to get out of bed.

The sun shone, the sky was blue.

I waved Sam good bye at 8am. The Builder’s recycle bin had already been emptied and was sitting in the gutter out the front. It gave me a certain feeling of ease knowing that the lid not closing, after I had filled it up with our waste, hadn’t upset the guys who emptied it.

I ate muesli. I drank coffee. I read the news. I looked at Facebook. Buddy sat in my lap.

Just after 9.30am, I decided to catch the train to Camberwell to pay my parking fine I got in [mum’s street] the last time we were there to collect the dining room table. I left at around 10am, walking to Parliament.

Upon investigation, I could go to Glenferrie station and to the Hawthorn town hall right next door. It was the closest town hall/train station combination out of all the options.

I was dressed and leaving the house not long after. It was a bit cool, despite the sun shining, but I had on a woollen jumper and a copy of In Cold Blood in my hand to keep me warm.

Forth platform for a train to Glenferrie station from Parliament Station. I raced down to Platform 4, funny how there is always a sense of urgency when you are rushing down those escalators. The train from platform 4 was heading around the City Loop, I didn’t want to spend 20 minutes going around the City Loop, so I walked over to platform 3 where there was a train going directly to Flinders Street Station, 3 minutes later, so I caught that.

It was lovely catching the train. Very cool, relaxing, easy. I read my book and looked out the window. I try to catch the train, or walk, instead of driving now a days. If we all tried to catch the train instead of driving, you never know, we could possibly save the planet.

And it is nice to be driven somewhere, chauffeured, even if it is by a train driver. It gives you a whole other perspective to travel and your city and life really, it is unhurried and non-combative.

When I got to the Hawthorn Town hall, there were mothers and their children buying tickets to go and see something by Roald Dahl in the town hall. The woman in front of me, of course, wanted to know if she could get her 4 year old in for free, despite her having what looked like a 4 year old, a 5 year old and a 6 year old, so the guy had to go off and find out and we were all left standing there wasting our time while he did. The answer was that all children had to buy tickets to a kid’s show, (oh really, I was surprised, not) so she eventually did. As this was going on, another woman finally came out from the back office and asked if everyone were buying tickets.

“No, I’m paying a parking fine.”

“Oh, that’s no fun,” she exclaimed. “Everyone else are getting tickets and you have to pay a fine.” Big eyes.

I complained about the fine that I got in my mum’s side street. “When did a normal suburban side street have no parking signs?” I asked.

“Is it Hawthorn, or Camberwell?”

“Camberwell,” I said.

“Oh, where I live in Hawthorn, I get parking tickets all the time.”

All I could think was, idiot, at that comment.

In my entire driving years, this would only be my 3rd, of 4th parking ticket. There are very few things that are a bugger waste of money than a parking ticket.

On the way home, I got off at Richmond station, as by the time I faffed around at Flinders Street Station, finding a direct train to Parliament, then walking from Parliament to home, I might as well just walk from Richmond to Fitzroy. It was a crisp, sunny day after all, even if it wasn’t so warm.

Sam and I ate lunch at the Japanese restaurant, he had fried chicken, I had Ramen.

I sneaked off to the Salvos in Abbotsford and bought KD Lang and Joe Cocker CDs, 10 for $10. I love that. C&C Music Factory, David Campbell, and Leona Lewis’ first CD.

I waited for the rest of my Bette Davis DVDs to arrive in the post. What is it they say about a watched letter box?

It was a sunny afternoon.

Buddy kept sitting himself in my lap. He just crawls in, unannounced, like the unstoppable force, like I am incidental to the whole procedure.

3.30pm. What time does the postie usually arrive?

I got out my trusty serrated knife and chopped up all of the remaining boxes, half of the large bed box and all of the garden storage box. I cut it up in anticipation of the [shops name] recycle bin being put out tonight. And it was bin night, so I was determined that I was going to get rid of all the mountain of waste cardboard tonight. Cleared. Gone.

I cut it up on the front veranda, as I half waited for the postie to arrive.

Funny that I revel in being the old bin lady of the street. It is funny that I pride myself on being able to get rid of all of our rubbish, not matter how much there is. I am sure I get it from my mother. By hook, or by crook, just get rid of it all.

I cut the cardboard into easily handled pieces, for a quick dispatch. My hand hurt by the time I was done. As I was cutting it up, I noticed that the crazy blond bitch from the end of the lane had already put out her bins. I looked inside her recycle bin, it was a quarter full. I got our recycle rubbish from the kitchen and emptied it into her bin, so our bin was clear for the cardboard. We didn’t have so much recyclable rubbish, so her bin was still only half full, so I filled it with cardboard. I looked in her normal bin next to it, and it was almost empty too, so I filled that with cardboard. I cut the rest of the cardboard into even smaller pieces and managed to get a lot of it into our recycle bin. Then I put out our main rubbish and I managed to stack the rest of the cardboard into the top of our normal rubbish bin. And then I’d suddenly got rid of all of the cardboard. I was pleased.

The old bin master does it again.

Sam came home and said let’s take Buddy to the dog park.

On our walk around to the park, I saw that all the bins in the neighbourhood were out, many of them stacked with old boxes on top of them.

“Look at that,” I said. “These people just aren’t trying hard enough. Cut them up people, get this shit into your bins. You know the garbos aren’t supposed to take anything that is not inside your bin.”

Sam just looked at me like I was talking rubbish. (Do you see what I did there? Do you like it?)

“Really, these people should be trying harder,” I said.

I’d found two more Bette Davis CDs that I wanted, Winter Meeting and June Bride, which I have always wanted. To Sam’s credit, he just let me order them, paying for them with his PayPal account. I did say that I’d set up my own Pay Pal account, but he said, “No, just use mine.”

We ate rice and spicy pork mince and tofu and snow peas and carrots for dinner.