Civic torment

‘Do you mind if I just put a bag of garden waste next to yours if you’re having it collected?’ said the friendly lady who lives next door.

I was piling up my regulation green canvas bags for ‘heavy garden waste’ and white bags for ‘light garden waste to be composted’ when she popped the question as she opened the door to her house. A harmless enough request in days gone by. But in the current climate?

Reader, I panicked. I froze to the spot. I had already informed Lambeth council of the amount of waste, almost to the nearest ounce, to be collected. I had counted the bags three times over to make sure I was giving them the right information. I had sifted through the bags meticulously, shredding the skin on my hands, to make sure there were no unauthorised materials inside — no soil, rubble, bits of plant pots, no vegetable peelings or anything else that could be construed as foodstuffs, and no large branches (length not specified so I err on the side of caution and cut anything from a tree into a million tiny pieces).