The saga of the skip

I do wonder whether it is worth blogging about a subject that I have already bored everyone around me with for the last 2 weeks, but there is still rarely an hour that goes by that I don't think of skips. This morning we saw 3 on the way to work. That can't be normal.

Starting at the very beginning, we spent much of May taking trips to the local tip (sorry, 'recycling centre'), but still the pile of junk in the garden was growing and not receding (due to pulling down teh back fence, clearing out behind the back fence etc). One day I decided that enough was enough and that we would fork out the money for a skip. The company were very obliging and told us that it would take around a week to get a permit, but that the skip would be with us in exactly 2 weeks.

The week of the skip arrived and I decided that it would be worth spending our evenings moving the pile of junk from the back garden to the front garden to make it easier to load the skip. After all, the junk would only be there for a couple of days. This involved a large number of trips up and down the garden. William helpfully sat bang in the middle of the only available route, temporarily moved out the way as we passed and then sat back down again.


The day of the skip arrived and Ian and I spent the day in teh lounge, looking out the window every 5 minutes to make sure that no one had tried to park in front of our house. We had used our car to block half the property boundar and placed a wheelie bin on the other half. The hours went by and the skip did not come. At 5 pm the neighbours drove up, got out of the car and moved the wheelie bin before parking in front of our house. I was about to go out and ask them to move when Ian suggested that this was a waste of time - they were obviously not coming. This was the last weekend for a month in which we would both be home and we were both upset that our plans had been ruined. Still we did not risk moving our car though in case we lost that spot as well.

Saturday morning arrived and we phoned the skip company, who were most surprised to find that the skip hadn't shown up - blaming the local company for not delivering it. The local company decided not to answer their phones all saturday morning so we gave up on it being delivered at the weekend. Ian stayed at home on the Monday, saving a spot for the skip with our car and phoning the company every couple of hours. Eventually they came up with the answer 'we don't think there is a permit for the skip yet' (i.e. they forgot to order one in the first place). The week went by and on Thursday morning they phoned to say that it would be delivered on Friday. Unfortunately we were due to go to Formby on Friday, but we managed to arrange a morning delivery.


Thursday night came round. We went home early to beat the other workers in the street to the parking spot outside our house only to find a washing machine repair van that had been there in the morning was still outside our house at 4:30. A quick phone call to the company revealed that the company was based in Newton Abbot, the owner of the van had gone to Glastonbury until Monday and as to why they had left the van in Exeter they didn't know. So we cancelled the skip and rearranged it for Tuesday (tomorrow).

We have left signs outside our house asking no one to park. I am beginning to dread going home. Please everyone cross your fingers that our neighbours (and all washing machine repair men in a 20 mile radius) don't ignore those signs.