Suburban Saturday

In the queue for our local dump, at opening time, that is to say 0903 on this Saturday morning. Queue to the left, stretching into the distance. Parked cars to the right, presumably owned by people working in the vicinity.

Not as bad as it looks, with us into the dump within 10 minutes or so. And the queue had vanished by the time we left. We thought while we waited that it was a pity that the windscreen sticker issued by the dump people on a previous visit to certify that we were Epsom residents entitled to use the dump, not some aliens from Sutton or somewhere, visible pale orange to the right of the windscreen, was not more like the National Trust sticker, invisible to the left, which might have been amusingly confusing.

Seeing various signs about Suez, we inquired to find that this was the name of the company which had taken over dump operations about six months ago. Which returning to base we find is the current moniker of Sita, for which see reference 1. From which I fail to learn what Suez stands for, but do learn that rubbish is all mixed up with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an outfit which seems to be chock full of bright young things and bright young talk about rubbish recycling.

I thought the name was familiar and further googling revealed that this Ellen MacArthur was indeed the one who sailed around the world and whose B&Q badged, black & orange catamaran we had once seen moored in the vicinity of Cowes. Ask google about 'b&q helen macarthur catamaran'.

And I had thought she had retired to live in a near underground eco-house in the Outer Shetlands - whereas actually she appears to have done rather well in her new calling.

All in all, despite my Old Labour leanings, I think I am content that the council should have offloaded this particular bit of business to a specialist provider.

PS: the catamaran is the sort of thing that I would notice these days, but it appears to have been sold, from Cowes, in 2007, the one year when we missed the Isle of Wight in favour of Tenby. Must have been spotted in 2006, a few months before the invention of the blog. See reference 3.

Reference 1: http://www.sita.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/.

Reference 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3VYZDG5uWs.