I was just arriving at El Vino on Fleet Street for a leaving do when my phone rang. It was my wife, sounding frantic. ‘Where’s that box?’
‘What box?’
‘The box that was outside our bedroom door.’
I didn’t just do the bins effectively, I did them with grace. I did the bins, I thought, in the manner of Roger Federer
My mind started working quickly. It was a Thursday evening. The box in question, small and nondescript, had indeed been by our bedroom door. It had been there since Saturday evening or Sunday morning and I had passed it any number of times until earlier that day, shortly before 6 a.m., I had finally picked it up and taken it downstairs, giving it a little shake on the way to confirm my by-now firmly established belief that it was empty.
‘It’s in the recycling…’ Even as I said it I could sense that this was the wrong answer.
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