It’s Sunday again, and we know what that means, a trip to the tip. I don’t know why its always on a Sunday that people decide to have a bit of a clear out, but that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be.

It’s not a very interesting topic as I’m sure you are saying to yourself right now, but stay with me.

It came about when I looked outside to see my father putting rubbish into the back of his car, things that have been cluttering the garage for a while now. Christmas is always a time when more rubbish seems to accumulate in the garage, and especially this year.

The bad weather we have had in England from the beginning of the year has meant the disappearance of bin men, and bottle men. This said we had a garage full of Christmas paper, rubbish and bottles that still haven’t been collected yet.

I opted to help out and we were soon on the way to the rubbish tip. We were greeted by the usual queue of cars waiting for their turn to deposit their unwanted junk, and joined the back of the line to begin the slow crawl to the gates.

Usually we arrive at just the moment when they close the gates to bring in the digger, taking away a full bin or compressing an existing bin’s contents to allow for more rubbish, but today we were fortunate, no digger! Indeed we didn’t even wait that long to go in, and we were soon inside the heart of the action, people moving in all directions, hands full of tree branches, old toys, doors and rubble. Sometimes it’s hard to make out what some people are carrying. This place is a grotty wonderland, a hoarders paradise.

It didn’t take long for my dad and myself to part with our rubbish. The Christmas tree, paper, bottles, and an old garage door all meeting their doom, then we were on our way again, making room for the next carload to occupy our vacated space. I wondered how much rubbish is collected each day, and how much has been collected from the very first day.

On the way home we passed the mounds of snow on the edges of the roads, left there from the snow fall nearly three weeks ago, except now it was black and filthy. I had an urge to scrape the layer of dirt off to see the white snow underneath, but we were driving, so I couldn’t. Its funny how the snow always has a shelf on the underside where the snow is melting away, almost as if the mound is floating a little off the ground.

It always surprises me how much you can see when just taking a small trip to the tip, fascinating eh!