Originally published by the Clifton Courier, November 25, 2020

Yeah look, it’s been a while. I meant to only take a break for Christmas after posting this video:

..but I never got around to posting the video. Turns out I was super busy, but I can’t say exactly what I was busy doing. I will let you assume that’s because that’s because my activities are classified secrets, rather than because I simply lost control of my life for a while there. Anyway, all you need to know is that I’m back now.

I forgot to put the bins out last night. 

My housemates are away, meaning I’m the Woman of the House (which, I suppose, means I’m able to answer my phone with “lady of the house speaking” so that’s something I should embrace with gusto).

I’m responsible for closing the windows when it starts to rain. I’m responsible for fetching the mail. I’m responsible for cooking up elaborate schemes to protect my house from bungling robbers.

I’m also responsible for ensuring the household waste is collected. 

The kitchen tidy was full last night and I had made a mental note to take the rubbish down to the bin. 

* I was going to do something with a wheelie bin, but they are either very hard to draw or my brain is broken. So I drew a person with a bag of rubbish for a head instead. The t-shirt slogan is a reference to the Weasley twins shouting “that’s rubbish” in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when they were barred from entering the TriWizard Tournament because they were underage. I just love that this was the response that seemed fitting of two rowdy 16-year-old boys who were expressing their deep displeasure at something.

But there’s more to putting the rubbish bag into the wheelie bin than just depositing a rubbish bag into a bin. 

The wheelie bin is kept underneath the house and under the house is unsealed. And most of the time that’s perfectly fine. We don’t hang out under there. We don’t hold dinner parties or do yoga under there or anything. We don’t need a fancy concrete slab. 

However, when you’ve already had your shower for the night and the only shoes you have by the door are thongs, you do find yourself longing for a slab of concrete. 

Because even though I’ve spent a great deal of my life in thongs, I haven’t yet masted the ability to not flick ground filth up at me while wearing them. Perhaps it’s something in my gait – I do have a distinct rhythm when it comes to thong wearing, with my signature combination of flicks and slaps being so individual my sister can recognise it across a crowded hardware store – or maybe I’m just wearing the wrong size thongs. 

But, whatever the reason, I find that I feel I need to wash my feet when I come in after taking out the rubbish. It’s very biblical of me. 

Plus, now that it’s getting warmer, there’s the very real threat of encountering cane toads after dark. 

I mean, I don’t care how wussy and squeamish it makes me sound, I don’t think anyone would want to risk potential exposure to a cane toad if they can help it.  There’s a lot many of us would disagree on but I think I can speak for all of humanity when I say: “cane toads are yucky”. They are universally unpleasant.

And when you’re wearing thongs, the risk of touching one with an unsuspecting foot is very high. 

So I went to bed, pledging that I would deal with the rubbish situation at first light. I even set my alarm nice and early on my day off.

But my alarm was not early enough. 

This morning my slumber was rudely disturbed by the screechy brakes, bin-grabbing hydraulics and tumbling of household refuse in the metal belly of the truck. I bolted out of bed, grabbed the rubbish bag and raced out the front in my bedclothes*. I wouldn’t say I was scantily clad, but I certainly wouldn’t wear that…outfit to work.

* I can’t remember what my bedclothes consisted of at the time, however, I think it’s safe to assume that I wasn’t wearing pants. Like, I get away with some pretty casual outfits at work, but even I have my standards. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I draw the line at the criminal definition of public indecency.

The garbage truck was on the other side of the road when I triumphantly landed the bin on the curb. I reasoned that, given the garbage truck woke me from across the road far up the street, you’d think I’d have woken if the truck had been getting to work right outside my window. Surely, it must not have been through on my side of the street. There might still be time. 

But then I felt the weight of the red-lidded bin my more punctual neighbours had placed out on the curb. It was unsettlingly light. It could have been empty. 

However, I held out hope. 

I made myself a cup of tea, put on some long pyjama pants and have been sitting out on the front veranda ever since, waiting for the garbage truck like a child waits for Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve.

But it’s been more than an hour now and there’s been no truck, only commuters walking past the house on their way to the train station.

So I think I’ll wait an hour or two before bringing the bin in. Not so much because I’m hopeful for redemption, but so there’s no one around to witness my walk of shame – wheeling a full garbage bin back into the yard.

The ultimate suburban humiliation.