Me and bins and dustbin lorries ! Kuh !
Many years ago when Julian was about twelve and already an all-knowing adolescent I flashed my rather full wallet at him after a particularly successful week's show and said, " All mine matey Aha !" or something equally piratical that he didn't laugh at !
Actually, I can't recall Julian ever finding me funny and I could never get him to 'surrender' either ! My other children always gave in, if not when I tickled them beyond screaming to their mother for help, then when I knelt across their necks to stop them breathing ! Oh ! They had a great childhood !
But never Julian !
He grabbed my wallet with six hundred odd quid in it, chucked it in my workshop bin and walked out!
I was obviously already well on the road to senility as I instantly forgot about it and left it there.
Now I did have a very serious dose of man-flu at the time and for once said to Shirley, " I feel awful and I'm going to bed for an hour and she replied kindly;
" You're pathetic and don't forget that the bin-men'll be here soon and you haven't emptied your bin into the dustbin yet so do it now or is that too much to expect of you cos I wont be able to lift it when it's full of your rubbish and much too heavy for me and don't you worry cos I'll have the kids and cook tea while you're snoring your head off and don't lie on my side cos I don't want to catch anything from your dribble and don't even think of reading cos if you're as ill as you're pretending to be you'll have one of your visual migraines that everyone knows you make up to get you out of stuff and how come we women just keep going however ill we feel or how would the world carry on without us but not men eh oh no a snivel and they've not long to live well don't just stand there go to bed as you do look awful but then there's no change there then is there and don't even think that you can call me upstairs for any of your nonsense and your eyebrows need trimming!"
So I emptied my bin into the dustbin and put the dustbin out and went to bed and woke up screaming an hour later and ran out to the street shouting, " Nooooooooooooooooooooo! "
But oh yes ! The bin lorry had long been and gone, taking my wallet with it !
And despite hysterically digging up the dump in the spot that the foreman said they'd dumped my street's rubbish and actually finding some of our identifiable waste, my wallet and it's lovely money never turned up !
Postscript...My insurers believed my improbable story and payed up half the amount and then refused to insure me again !
Then many years later I was sitting 'doing' my books when Shirley reminded me that I had some rubbish to throw in the bin just after the bin lorry had been .
So rushing out with a big box held on one hand at shoulder height I called out, " OK if I chuck this in ? " and given the nod, did so but not without activating the bin lifting device which came up at great speed, grabbing me under my wallet which I kept in my front left pocket and instantly lifted me up and had just started to throw me through the rubber curtains into the body of the truck where it turned out the ram was on it's way to crush me, when my jeans tore and I was thrown clear, landing mangled in a heap on the road!
This all took two seconds and as the bin men were away collecting bins, they couild do nothing but stare in terror for they would have been in great trouble for contravening 'health and safety' !
One of them managed to lunge for the emergency stop button about ten seconds after I would have been killed which was a pointless act !
They were worried....that they'd lose their jobs if I reported the incident but I assured them that it was my fault and that as I hated the 'compensation culture ' that was in it's first flush of sueing anything that moved, I would not be reporting anything and with that they left and I staggered back indoors battered and bruised and bleeding and with my jeans ripped asunder !
Shirley didn't look up but said, " You took your time didn't you ? "
That's when I fainted !
Now many men have probably worked out that to lift a man by his front pocket means that forces would be brought to bear bringing the crutch seam of the jeans rather uncomfortably tightly up against the most delicate parts of a gentlman's anatomy !
Correct !
" And Doctor " I said a week later, " That's how and why 'they' look immensely swollen and are tender to the touch !"
He said, " That makes MY eyes water! " And sent me for an ultra-scan which was carried out by three very attractive ladies who smothered the aforementioned articles in a substantial amount of KY Jelly in order to spend not long enough, in my opinion, manoeuvering their probe around and over them before finding nothing wrong and wiping me clean !
And that is as close to death as I ever wish to come !
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