May 8th 2006
The Trouble and I are still happily playing the game of Overfilling The Kitchen Bin. Similar in spirit to the game of Don’t Put A New Toilet Roll In The Holder After Using The Last Of The Old Toilet Roll, but a lot more physical, the sport of Overfilling The Kitchen Bin is a game that I suspect is played throughout the length and breadth of the country, and probably every other country that has kitchen bins for that matter. However if by some odd chance there is someone out there who doesn’t know what the game involves, here’s how it usually goes.
One of you, either the husband or wife, but in my experience almost always the wife, starts off the game by putting something in the kitchen bin, say an empty can, and observes, because the lid will not now close properly, that the bin is full.
She then puts her hand in the kitchen bin and presses firmly down, thus compressing the rubbish within and making more room (This sometimes results in a cut finger from a jagged tin, but that’s one of the hazards that an Overfilling The Kitchen Bin player has to put up with). Having compressed the rubbish the lid will now fit on properly again.
Later the husband drops something or some things into the bin, enough to fill it again. He too observes that the lid will not now close properly. He does exactly the same as his wife did. Both husband and wife carry on in this manner until the lid won’t fit on properly even after you’ve put your hand in the bin and pressed firmly down.
You then put your foot in the bin and press down. A couple of good pushes down ensures that the lid will fit on again. You both carry on doing this until even the downward pressure from your foot fails to compress the rubbish sufficiently enough for the lid to fit. The way of disposing of kitchen waste now is not to open the lid and drop the rubbish in, as that can’t happen now as there is no space in which to drop it, but to pick up the lid, drop the rubbish in the bin, then balance the lid on top of the rubbish. From where it keeps falling off. (Actually climbing into the bin and stamping the rubbish down is looked upon as cheating and should only be done when you are quite sure that your partner is out)
Eventually one of you, usually the man, as women have been blessed with more patience, tires of picking up the lid from off the kitchen floor and changes the bin liner. This is far from straightforward as due to all the pushing down by hand and foot the rubbish has become compacted to such a degree that it might just as well have been bonded to the sides of the bin with superglue. You now have to pull at the bin liner with such force in order to release it that either (a) it rips at the top, part of it coming away in your hands, leaving the rest of it in the bin and rendering it almost impossible to get out as there is nothing to grip, or (b) it comes out more easily than you expected, taking you so much by surprise that you drop the liner and spill the contents all over the floor. On very rare occasions the liner will come out slowly and cleanly, but this is no cause for celebration as when this happens there is invariably a rip in the liner caused by an empty tin and the contents spew out through the hole and all over the floor as above.
The Trouble and I have been playing the game of Overfilling The Kitchen Bin ever since kitchen bins and bin liners were invented. Occasionally, to lull the other into a false sense of security, one or other of us will replace the bin liner when it should replaced, i.e. when it is just full. But only occasionally. Mostly we play the Overfilling The Kitchen Bin strictly by the rules. And being human we always will do I suppose.
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Razzamatazz
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.)
This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000….
My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas.
A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road.
I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.
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Hey, we play that game at my house….who would have thought. I thought it was just us.
No! we invented it!
Terrific posts! I love the last few. Cracks me up and some very good insight.