WANDERING home through Old Town the other night, I nearly fell over. This is hardly an unheard of occurrence in the life of a journalist, but bear with me.

I had stepped on something that had been torn from among a heap of discarded bin bags next to a wall. I don't know what it was, but it was large, squishy, dark yellow and smelled faintly of chicken. My guess is that it was some sort of foodstuff - or had been a week or a fortnight before.

I didn't want to look closely because I feared becoming involved in a turf war between any urban foxes and seagulls who'd staked claims on the heap.

Anyway, now that the new refuse collection rules have been in place for a wee while, may I just make a few suggestions?

If you're a householder living in one of the blue bag zones, use your blue bags, not black ones. If you don't know whether you live in a blue bag zone, the fact that all your neighbours put out blue bags on collection day may be a clue. If for some reason you haven't been issued with blue bags and feel you should have been, ring the council.

If you're part of the team that sends crews out to pick up bags, then you have my gratitude, and your crews doubly so. That old saying about dukes and dustmen is unfair - to dustmen. I can't think of any dukes who go out in all weathers to keep me and my loved ones safe from typhus, cholera and rat infestation.

That said, if you happen to be on your rounds and see that somebody has left a black bag when they should have left a blue one, could you pick it up anyway? I know the rules are being bent, but a refuse bag is a refuse bag to a colour-blind gull or fox.

If you're a senior member of the refuse collection department, perhaps you could arrange to have the day of collection written in great big letters on every bag, recycling box and bin you distribute. That way, we'll all know precisely what we're doing, and the labelling will cost pennies.

Nobody wants future generations to be overwhelmed by garbage - but nobody particularly wants to be overwhelmed by it right now, either.

Sad statement

SADDEST paragraph in the Swindon Advertiser this week?

It was a comment from a 78-year-old man in Wroughton who's had to rebuild his garden wall three times following vandalism. The criminals remain unidentified and as free as birds.

He said: "The last time, I was a lot more upset about it, but I guess you get used to it, and are waiting for something to happen."

I'm not knocking the police. The few officers who are allowed to leave the handful of remaining police stations are hopelessly overworked.

Welcome to reality. You get used to it.

4:27pm Saturday 8th December 2007

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