Single Parenthood & I: Out With The Old

There ain't nothing like some midsummer's replenishment to make you feel brand new.

There’s been a pile of rubbish in my back garden for a while, now. Long story short, I cleared out a lot everything of what I owned, and even though it turned out that there was no essential need for this to happen, I’m grateful for the fact that it did.

But this doesn’t alter the fact that this pile of junk needed getting rid of, and without a car, I had really no way of doing so. This is all the more frustrating because I live about a ten minute walk from the local tip, but have no means of using it without outside assistance.

The restrictions on using the tip would always have affected me. The public have, so far as I’m aware, haven’t been allowed to enter it on foot for years. But that was surmountable. I could always ask a friend with a car if we could pop up there and get something done if I needed to. And you can always find more.

But during the pandemic, even that was swept away. You had to make an appointment now for a half-hour time slot at least 24 hours in advance, and that meant that friends with cars (who, of course, also have jobs) were no longer an option for me.

This, however, was reckoning without my next door neighbour Dave. He and his family live to my right. He’s always been chatty and as we’ve talked and my circumstances have changed over the last few years, he’s been there to help me out. And a few weeks ago he offered to take some of this huge pile up there.

He’s forever tinkering around and making things, so his visits to the tip are common, but we managed to fit 24 bin bags into the back of his people carrier alongside his on that glorious, glorious day.

And then a couple of weeks ago, I got a text:

Hi Ian.

If you would like me to book a dump slot next week.

We can load the car up and get rid of any stuff you don’t want.

Solely for your stuff.

Let me know what date and time works for you ?

You can come with me to unload.

Dave

I was staggered by his generosity, and have learned to take people up on things like this when they offer, so off we went. I let him know when my days off were and he booked it for the next day that I was available. What a man. I need more people like that in my life. Booked for 10.00 on Tuesday morning.

There was a mild moment of embarrassment before we loaded his people carrier up, when it became evident that an old washing basket had filled with water that had turned stagnant and, upon movement, gave off a smell reminiscent of what London probably smelled like before the intervention of Joseph Bazalgette. Fortunately I have a garden hose that was able to take care of that, so off we went.

The tip has changed, man. I used to love going there. It had its own little economy, people with trestle tables out the front selling what they’d pulled out that looked any good, and at extremely low prices. There was something almost untamed about it. It felt like an adventure.

But the stratification of it has changed it. Nowadays, it’s like getting on a car ferry. You sit in the car for ten minutes in the queue, then show your ID, and then drive round to a parking bay. You then have to approach one of a row of metal cages while men in high-vis jackets stand around, at best judging you and at worst telling you that you’re heading towards the wrong cage like you’re some sort of tip noob.

The customer-base is almost entirely made up of two particular demographics; builders and old people. The builders will be there every couple of days. The old people are the only others who can use it, because most sensible people have jobs. The gender division, I would say, was no more than 95/5, men to women. I mean, it was high enough that I noticed it, at least.

And of course, there’s always space for looking at what other people have chucked out. Free quad bike! Free bass drum! These were just two of the delights that the good people of Worthing had chosen to chuck out on this particular morning. But the range of things being thrown out and the absolute state of it is always fascinating, as well. How did that get in that condition in the first place?

We got it done, and without stinking his people carrier out with the smell of the summer of 2025. We still have more to do, but he’s going to book another day in a couple of weeks, and then I can get on with spending the rest of the summer whipping the rest of the garden into shape. I don’t have the time that I had a couple of months ago (and thank God, might I add), so my original goal of getting it done by the end of May came and went.

But getting rid of that huge pile of clutter has de-cluttered my mind, a little. Summer’s here, so I’m having a refresh; out with the old, in with the new. I need to replenish my wardrobe, and for all that I’m sure it’ll end up enshittified, the same as everything else, for now Vinted remains an extremely good way of picking up odds and sods of nice clothes for really not very much money. I can go for something different.

This also allows room for experimentation. I had a pair of brown cords which I recently dyed black. The copper buttons and brown stitching make a nice contrast against the recoloured material. More recently, I bought a leather jackety-type thing that I suspect might have been new old stock, such was the condition it arrived in. And that, of course, presented a problem of its own. It was too goddam shiny. It was more than halfway towards looking as though I was going to a quite specific form of sex party.

So, I’ve been going at this jacket every now and then with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a cloth, and the results have been… encouraging. It looks distressed. Lived in. And since the damn thing only cost £20 including delivery, it’s an amount of money that I could have afforded to pour too much rubbing alcohol over, to the point that I was left with a pile of highly alcoholic mush that I’d then have to scoop into a bin bag and take to the tip, because the binpeople ain’t going to be touching that shit. Circle of life, I guess.