Very often we do an admirable job of dealing with normal. When things carry on, the same today as it was yesterday, we’re happy and can cope. Occasionally, though, circumstances combine and a situation occurs that isn’t routine.
We have a local recycling point. It’s about a mile away from home, so we store up the things that can be recycled and about once a month, when we’re passing, we drop off the bottles, cardboard, tins and plastic that can be reused. Obviously, just after Christmas, is a busy time in the recycling world but the following sight isn’t something that I would have expected.
Paper and cardboard was piled outside of the cardboard bin, all the glass containers were full and there was very little space for recycling cans.
Now, I think I could have guessed that the weeks after Christmas were going to be a really busy time for recycling, so possibly a good time for putting on extra collections or providing extra bins, or maybe even putting up a few signs of what to do should bins become full.
We face a similar national crisis with the snow. Local councils running out of grit and salt for the roads. I have to say I’m surprised by this. It wasn’t so long ago that they were all claiming to have contingency plans for heavy snow and that there wasn’t going to be a problem.
On Tuesday, Tany and I went to see Holmes, the film – don’t bother, it’s not worth it – so were in the cinema for two and a half hours. It was cold but clear when we went in. All the snow had melted from before Christmas and nothing fresh had fallen. When we came out it looked like this…
It made getting the car out to drive home entertaining.
The cinema is in a shopping centre. People here are quite impressed by this place, but I’m always wondering why they couldn’t put a roof on the whole thing. Tuesday night it was snowing inside! It makes me think that they didn’t plan ahead.
So my challenge from now on is to spend some time planning ahead. Maybe taking a couple of hours out of the week to think what needs to be done and what could happen if things go badly or go well. If it snows again tonight I may not be going out tomorrow and I’ll have more time for doing this.