I’ve made Sutch an issue of how to pack W

HUDDERSFIELD music legends the Killermeters are in town for a launch gig at Rhubarb in Queensgate on Saturday to showcase their new album and single.

It’s also being billed as a 1979 West Riding Reunion, with legendary DJ Billy Longden coming up from London for the occasion.

Forty years ago, the West Riding pub was one of the popular music venues in town with Billy behind the decks and he will be playing sounds to revive memories of the period.

The Meters have built a reputation as one of the country’s top mod bands over the last 40 years. They will be playing numbers from their selftitled album – which is a classic.

It’s available on CD and vinyl and they also have two videos on Vimeo.

A pounding Last Taxi captures the spirit of the LP and there is also a great acoustic version of High Life.

To watch the videos, search for Vimeo killermeters; or go their website: www. thekillermeters.co.uk for links and more details of the gig. E have never had trouble with our rubbish until a helpful relative emptied half the garage into the green bin. The items were suitable for recycling but it was the manner of their disposal that caused problems.

I always break down cardboard boxes until they are flat. Same applies to any item that can be dismantled. So I got a shock when the green bin was packed to bulging a week before it was due to be emptied. Whoever had filled this, needed lessons in packing. There were hidden gaps that left space unused and unreachable.

When I mentioned it to my wife she snorted and suggested I’d had a phobia with packing since I’d been in charge of overalls in 1958. True, I worked for a year in the men’s department of an emporium that had escaped from a Charles Dickens novel and my first ever promotion was to be put in charge of overalls, which were wrapped in bundles in brown paper tied with string, according to size, colour and style, and racked on floor to ceiling shelves.

The elderly head of department was pleased to pass on this responsibility because it entailed climbing up and down ladders to get XXL brown bib and brace from the top shelf.

I became an expert packer, learnt how to snap string with my bare hands and, after six months, was awarded my own set of scissors by the shop owner. This filled me with both pride and disquiet because I was applying for jobs in journalism at the time. Would I have to hand in my scissors when I left?

Over the years, my packing skills became legendary. Or contentious. My wife, fed up of me unpacking her suitcase to re-pack it when going on holiday, simply left all such jobs to me and refused even basic lessons with a raised eyebrow and an expression that suggested I should get a life.

I’m sorry. But I like things to be packed properly, whether on shelves, at the supermarket or in my thermal underwear drawer. So a green bin that obviously had the capacity to take more, if it had only been filled correctly, was annoying. Unpacking it outside was not an option, in breezy weather with frequent showers, and not even I was going to drag it into the kitchen and empty it on the floor. It made sense but my wife would have killed me. “I wish I had a woodshed,” I said. “Pardon?” said my wife.* My son-in-law Ronan keeps his bins next to the woodshed at his home in rural Donegal. This means that to pack down the rubbish, he stacks logs like stepping stones so he can stand inside the bin in his Wellington boots and stomp down the contents. Often he can be seen standing in a bin by the woodshed, a smile of compressed satisfaction on his face.

It’s the sort of useful and simple pastime I could see catching on in Yorkshire. Chaps in flat caps nipping out to stand in a bin while puffing on their e-pipes, their whippets sitting hopefully alongside, waiting for a walk.

“Mebbe later, Rover. This is bin time. It’s a man thing.”

Come to think of it, I once interviewed Screaming Lord Sutch while he was standing in a rubbish bin during a general election and he made more sense than Margaret Thatcher.

Do you think well-meaning relatives will take offence if I put up a sign saying: Don’t be a prat, pack it flat, or padlock the bin to ensure it’s used responsibly?

Or should I get a life?