Tut tut, I thought. Somebody should do something about that.
As he strolled past us, slowly, casually, I smiled and said Good evening. "Good to show him we're friends first", I rationalised to Simp. "Next time, we'll be able to tell him what he should do with his bins".
We walked on. Within seconds, a neighbour was out giving the man hell, yelling at him: "Pick that up! Get rid of it! GET rid of it!". The self-righteous neighbour was being a bully and an oaf, but he did have a point. The North African man slinked away towards his house.
We should drop a note into his house, rationalised Simp. Let him know the procedures. He probably doesn't know.
Two minutes later, we glanced behind us to see the man at the exit to our road, carrying his black sack with him. So we introduced ourselves.
"You need to get tags for those you see," we told him. "They won't pick them up until Thursday."
"I know, I'm going to buy tags now." He pointed at the Centra.
"No, but you can't leave it out tonight. They won't collect it till Thursday."
"Oh. Oh I see."
"Yes - and you can use green bags for recycling - for paper, and cans."
"And they pick the recycling up every second Friday".
We were on a roll. Falling over ourselves with civic responsibility and helpfulness and neighbourliness.
"But you shouldn't leave that out now or that man will shout at you again."
"Ok. I'll bring it back to my house now. Thank you."
We walked off grinning at how much better it is when you communicate with the neighbours. The man heaved the black sack over a fence and hurled it into the derelict yard at the end of the road.
1 comment:
Fantastic. When we were in Wisconsin, Clare and I saw a gut in the park at twilight, pulling random bits of recyclable rubbish out of his trench coat and throwing it in the public bins. It's illegal not to recycle but you have to spend like 50 cents or something on a bag.
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