Danni Segal, Slowly recovering The (ir)regular thoughts of Around-Bexhill.co.uk founder, Danni Segal, on life in Bexhill-on-Sea This column reflects the thoughts of Danni Segal, and does not claim to reflect the opinions of around-bexhill.co.uk or any of the shops or businesses listed on this site unless directly stated

Dateline: August 2007

Item: What a Load of Rubbish

We are told that recycling will save the world. Kids programmes and films regularly promote the new 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Our council wants us to reduce the amount we throw out and recycle as much as possible. This all being the case, you would think they would make it easy for us to do so, wouldn’t you? Well, you would be sadly mistaken.

Where I live the new black wheelie bins have been delivered to all the houses. Did I say all? Well, not all. In fact, the building I live in got none at all. I contacted the appropriate people via the email address on the multi-coloured leaflets we received about recycling, and was told “Thank you for your e-mail. I have passed on the details of your situation to the contractor, Verdant, and will ensure that they contact you as soon as possible.” Now, I don’t want to sound overly cynical here, but why did I need to contact them? Surely the people who were delivering bins and chose not to supply any to us could have informed their bosses there was a problem here and they could have contacted me? Or, better still, they could have arrange a proper meeting before changing the entire system.

Which probably wouldn’t be quite so bad if we actually knew which day the rubbish was going to be collected. We used to know. It used to be the same day every week, barring bank holidays. Now? It seems to vary week to week.

Now, in case you think I am against recycling then please let me assure you I am not. I make weekly trips to do my recycling - I have to as currently we have no coloured bins to put the recycling in to be taken away by the recycling people - and find myself having to head over to Asda at Pevensey Bay. I would love to use the more local facilities, but sadly they are very limited in scope and are usually full before I get there. I suppose I could just leave the rubbish by the sides of the recycling bins but that doesn’t strike me as being a brilliant idea. Asda, incidentally, have facilities to recycle cardboard (as mentioned in an earlier column) and cardboard drinks containers.

Mind you, I do believe we are being taken for a bit of a ride. In my youth we could take glass bottles back to the shop and get a deposit back; in other words, we were being PAID to recycle some 25 years ago - now we are expected to do it for free and risk being fined if we don’t.

I saw on TV the other day an advertisement explaining that if I recycle a glass bottle I will save enough energy to power a computer for 20 minutes. Over the course of the year I have recycled dozens of glass bottles, but I have not received even a free minute’s worth of computer electricity. What I want to know is: if I’m not getting all this energy that is saved by my recycling - who is?

Item: Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

There is a certain point in your life when you realise that you are no longer “young”. Sure, you can still be young in outlook and spirit, but you discover that you have more in common with the last generation then the next. There are various signs that this is happening:

• A modern song comes on the TV or radio, and you find yourself agreeing with your parents that it “is just noise” and that “songs used to have proper tunes”;
• You eat a KitKat bar by biting a piece off the end and not trying to carefully remove all the chocolate by nibbling around the edge first;
• Your choice of breakfast cereal is based upon what you like and not what free gift is stuck on the front of the box;
• You find yourself softly crying when you are ticking an age box on a form and find yourself now grouped with the 50 year olds rather then the 18 year olds.

I grew up in an era where “jumpers for goalposts” was our mantra. For those not aware of this phrase, please allow me to elaborate: during breaktimes at school most of the boys would dash out onto the playground for a game of football. As we didn’t have goalposts on the playground, the first children out would remove their jumpers and place two down at either end of the playground to mark the goalposts and the game could get underway.

Walking through Egerton Park on the afternoon of the 6th - a very warm day, as it happened, I was delighted to see this tradition still continues today. In an age when it seems children play football on an XBox 360 rather then a field, it was heart-warming to watch all the children enjoying a good old fashioned kick about.

Okay, so the jumpers as goalposts had made way for upturned bicycles for goalposts, but given the arguments over the offside rule I think we can allow that to slip.

Until next time,

Danni Segal
founder
around-bexhill.co.uk

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