Potty!

No more night time blips as everyone is getting far too concerned and offering me sleeping tips, rather than massaging my ego telling me how great I am, which is obviously what I really need because my ego is starting to deflate like a water bed with a slow puncture.

Instead of making images I tried reading other people's journals last night. It was great! I was looking at this and it reminded me of my own recycling bin story, which is soooooo much more extreme I wonder if I can do it justice here.

I used to live (before my life got thrown up in the air this year) on a farm in the middle of a wood with a long track about 3/4 mile to the main road. We had a post box on a tree at the main road and on bin day we had to put our bin bags and recycling bins near the post box (which meant a sometimes stinky car ride). Our nearest neighbour was in a house that was on the main road near the end of our track.

So bin day, I'm working at home and get a call from our neighbour asking had we brought our empty bin in, because he can't see it and he thinks that someone just stopped a car and stole it. He got the number plate and a description of the man. Well I thought how petty. Why would someone nick our bin? What could be the value in it? Just inconvenient for us. Probably need a bloody crime reference number to get the council to replace it. So without really considering the consequences of this, I rang the police and reported it, including number plate and description of man.

Then I put the phone down and suddenly thought, shit, what if the bin has not been taken and the neighbour was mistaken? I have just taken his word for it. Shit! Shit, I'm going to be had up for wasting police time. So I got in the car and drove to the post box to see whether actually the bin had just been moved out of sight by kind helpful passing motorist.

Meanwhile the police rang back and spoke to my (now ex) partner. He made some quip about me being out at the crime scene carrying out my own investigations.

The bin was nowhere to be seen so that was a relief, and shortly after I got back the house I had another call from the police saying they were very pleased to report that they had apprehended the bin thief and had retrieved the stolen property and we could collect it when it was convenient from the station. I thought bloody hell, a miracle, a crime solved. I was dead chuffed. I ask you out there, has anyone EVER had stolen property returned? I've been burgled a couple of times and have not had that experience.

Anyway Friday is bin day and we chuckled a lot at this happening speculating over the weekend at the comeuppance of the bin thief, how surprised he must have been to get caught, and the celebrations in the police station at a crime solved statistic. We went and collected our bin (a journey that probably cost us in petrol the price of said recycling crate).

THEN... on the Monday morning, I had another call from the police. Different officer, could I please go through all the details of what happened again. He was investigating complaint of police heavy handedness. He'd had a letter from the bin taker. He read it out to me. I wish I had recorded it or he had sent it to me. I only have the dim memory of it now, just the highlights. I am imagining someone like Victor Meldrew. I didn't say earlier (deliberately) that the description was elderly white haired gentleman...

So the gist of the letter was, long rant about how we were clearly irresponsible lazy good for nothing people who didn't take our bin in as soon as it was emptied and created a potential road hazard, and the wind had blown our bin into the road and this innocent good citizen had simply come along and removed the hazard (this was not in keeping with what our neighbour watched out of his window... but, hey, marks out of ten for a cover up story). But the next bit was about how an overnight in the cells was far too extreme for the crime, and do you know what? I have to agree! I can only imagine that he doth protest too much, got too gobby and nice police men, who are on all other occasions lovely and reasonable, lost their rag and banged him up. So I then started to feel sorry for the deranged bin thief.

Then somewhere along the line, not sure if I imagined it or it was mentioned, I got the idea that this was someone fairly local who passed by regularly. And then I started to freak. I started to imagine this person who was going to become obsessed with the injustice of what had happened and would see me as the perpetrator having reported the crime. So for ages after that, every time I put the bin out I was very anxious and used to look around in case anyone was spying from a bush waiting to pounce on me to get their revenge.

THEN... a few days after the call about the letter, we were chatting to our neighbour about it and he said that his daughter in law is a police officer and works in the armed response unit and the call originally came through to them (he could have been making it up, but it did make the story even more incredible). Thankfully they assessed it as low risk. CAN YOU IMAGINE what the letter would have been like if the armed response unit had been sent out? I could only speculate that the seriousness related to maybe bombs in bins, but really would you nick a bin for that? Especially one that has someone's address plastered all over it? (Oh did I forget to mention that earlier - in relation to how it was obvious that it wasn't just a random abandoned bit of fly-tipping?). I also started to think that the priority of allocation of police resources is somewhat misplaced...

Maybe I will talk about pottery tomorrow... These are all made by my own hand from early experimental days, before I went mad with colour decoration. I achieved one goal yesterday of unpacking the boxes of these and thinking about what to do with them (mostly repacking into a fresh box!!)