Skipping

Praise the Lord, as they say, the Council Skip has been over the road today and I've spent the morning loading it with broken plant pots, redundant paint tins, old doormats and the harmonium, which McDad spent every Sunday evening trying to repair, with no success. It had that memory all wrapped up in it, but practicality tells me that if McDad couldn't fix it after all those years, perhaps it was unfixable.
It has moved house with me four times and still only works on one side so you have to frantically pedal with one foot to get a wheezy chord or two out of it.
Actually, the harmonium went beside the skip, not in it, as I hoped someone might take it (and I think they have). The dustmen had fun quipping about busking and lots of passers-by stopped for a look, so it had its moment of glory even though Freecyclists, friends and various studios hadn't wanted it.
Council skip day is fun- all the hidden neighbours are out, throwing away their knackered clothes racks, unwanted scatter cushions and broken hobbies; the dustman sits on a discarded chair, rifling through CDs in a carrier bag before throwing them in the skip in disgust and disappointment.
As I dumped an old cobwebby doormat, he offered me a dirty white plastic double telephone socket adaptor, recoiling in disbelief when I told him I didn't want it, as though he'd offered me a pure gold ingot!
As one skip fills, another creeps down the street on its lorry; a white van circles, passing every ten minutes in search of carrion.
Offloading these things is amazingly therapeutic!