At our annual dinner we wear wheelie-bin cufflinks

We can probably now agree that putting the bins out is a man thing. After Philip May, the Prime Minister’s husband, claimed, in that TV interview, that it was his role, a group of us “men of the wheelie” were in the pub wondering whether he was a Monday guy or a Wednesday guy. In other words, does his bin collection take place on a Monday or a Wednesday? You get a sort of instinctive feeling about a chap’s day, but Mr May was hard to place. Some said he might even be a Tuesday guy.

In our gathering we are all Wednesday chaps and that’s when we gather in the evening to discuss the finer points of putting out the bins. For example, what do you wear? Do you favour the dressing gown or the special bin-putting-out uniform of corduroys and baggy sweater? Night before guy or early morning fellow? On the whole, we think it’s cooler to leave it till the early morning when you actually hear the bin lorry approaching down the street. More chaps, these days, are going in for extreme binning, waiting for the lorry to pass their house then chasing it through two or three streets.

We have debates about recycling conundrums, such as whither wire coat hangers from the dry cleaner’s (i.e. which bin)? Arguments go on long into the night. At our annual dinner we dress up and wear wheelie-bin cufflinks.

There is another group of men who meet in the bar – the dishwasher stackers. They tend to get quarrelsome and have now been barred for two weeks. There’s also a table reserved for half a dozen men, all wearing ties with the motif of a toilet with the seat up. We are not privy to what they discuss. From time to time, we ask ourselves whether women should be allowed to join our group. Some members feel this would change the nature of our “bin talk,” but if the women demand it, they will be hard to refuse.

While we are all rightly worried about fake news, we must not forget other important aspects of fakery. Here is an update on recent areas of concern:

Fake views. Certain rogue landscape artists are currently manipulating scenes to make their paintings look more alluring. Oak trees are added, rivers made more winding, clouds are quite simply made up so they wouldn’t recognise themselves. There have been reports of herds of gloomy friesian cows being transformed by the artist into Highland cattle. All this puts a blot on landscape painting and damages trust. Can we believe that the dog in the foreground of Constable’s Hay Wain was really there? And was Landseer’s stag actually at bay?

Fake blues. Pop stars screw up their faces and close their eyes in a picture of total despair and clutch the microphone in agony. They are actually very comfortably-off and leading a good life. Don’t be fooled.

Wine bars and gastropubs are being antiqued-up with supposedly random and ancient items of furniture.

Beware of unscrupulous persons roaming the country posing as Welshmen.

I believe we go through four stages of emotion while hanging on the phone waiting to speak to someone at a call centre. These are irritation, resignation, fascination and, finally, acceptance. The irritation is obvious, but eventually we resign ourselves to being in for the long haul.

I developed this theory recently while hanging on for 40 minutes to speak to my local council. The fascination kicked in at 25 minutes ,after I’d heard for the zillionth time that “all our officers are busy with other calls”. You imagine a large featureless room with dozens of people wearing headphones at rows of desks. That’s surely not right. With local government cuts, “all” is probably two. It must be the same with energy companies desperately seeking larger profits.

I began to picture a pokey room and one woman – I thought of her as a Sandra – heroically holding the fort. I guessed her colleague Brenda was off sick and she had to bring her five year-old son Baxter to work because he had a funny tummy.

While Baxter fidgeted, Sandra had to face the torrent of calls – the man who thought his recycling bin was spying on him for the CIA, the woman incensed about parking permits and all the complaints about foxes.

By the time Sandra answered I had reached the stage of acceptance. I apologised for bothering her. Now I wonder if I should give her a ring and see how she is.

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