Where's ya bin?

St Martinian
Yesterday's weather: Will you British please stop sending rain south?

Happy Monday everyone.

I have one of my least favourite jobs to do this morning. Our rubbish isn't collected and today I will have to tour the local bins looking for one empty enough to pile in a weeks' worth of recyclable rubbish. All household rubbish in rural France is collected from big wheelie bins placed at strategic points where there are a collection of houses. For the three houses along our track the nearest bins are on the other side of the main road. Unfortunately the same bins (one for household waste, the other for recyclable rubbish) also serve another 5 houses and I haven't yet worked out which days they are emptied, there doesn't seem to be a pattern. So, on any given day of the week they are likely to be full to bursting and we haven't recycled for a week.

The good thing about recycling here is that everything goes in one bin. Plastic, cardboard, polystyrene, tins, they all get sorted at a depot. Glass goes elsewhere and there are even fewer of those, so it could necessitate a visit to any of the 4 nearest villages to find an empty glass bin. We are recycling much more here than we did (to our shame) in England because it is so much easier, we are also composting as much as possible so our household 'smelly' rubbish (things that can't go on the compost or be recycled) is considerably less too.

Unfortunately we don't go out too often. Well, there is so much to do here and every excursion takes half a day; not to mention the fact that we are so happy to be here that we don't like to go out that much. So, the rubbish gets done once a week. Jon has volunteered to start painting the outside of the house (while the rain holds off for an hour or so) so I am on bin and shopping duty this morning.

I will just put on a balaclava and hoodie. I just hate people thinking that I have been hoarding my papers, wrappers and plastic bottles.

Diana Concert
Did anyone watch the concert yesterday? What were your highlights? I must say that I thought the sight of those two princes bopping away (even if William did look a bit like his Dad from time to time) was great. I am a little suspicious of Tom Jones' hair - only a really vain man would dye his eyebrows quite that dark, don't you think? Good to see Take That back together again too - shame about Robbie, perhaps he thought it was beneath him? Jon really surprised me by saying that P Diddy and Kayne West were fantastic. Rod Stewart was amazing....