My skip has arrived!!!

That’s three and a half sheds, a fireplace that I can chuck things into and a skip in the drive. Nobody will now be able to question my masculinity.

I watched the Skip Delivery Man carefully and skilfully use his Hydraulic Thing to edge the skip into an inch-perfect position.

I watched as my neighbour strode out of his house looking bemused. I lip-read words to the effect of ‘what the hell are you doing’. I watched the Skip Delivery Man carefully and skilfully use his Hydraulic Thing to lift the skip back onto the lorry. Then I watched him drive next-door to mine, and repeat the process.

His was a small lorry, carrying empty skips only. He chatted cheerfully as he worked.

I sometimes look at delivery men and very much envy their jobs. I’m sure that it’s more complicated than this, but driving round Norfolk stopping occasionally for a drop-off and a chat strikes me as not a bad way to earn a crust. One of my main reasons for the downshifting thing was the stress of corporate life, and here was a job that I’d very much like, but that would never occur to me to apply for. Odd, isn’t it?

“I was told to tell you that we’ll be putting building rubble in it,” I said, obediently.

“No problem, mate. That just means that it needs to be perfectly straight on the drive. Otherwise the big lorry can’t pick it up.”

He thought for a moment, and looked forlorn.

“That’ll be someone else. I don’t get to drive the big lorry.”

There’s corporate pecking order management shit in the skip delivery business as well.

“So what type of rubble is it?” he enquired eagerly, as I turned to go back indoors.

I guess in the skip world, rubble is all you really get to talk about. So we chatted for a while, although I struggled with any more detail than ‘bricks and stuff’. Let’s face it. I wouldn’t even pass the first interview.

But I woke up this morning cheered. I live in a neighbourhood where I can have a skip on my drive overnight, and not wake the next morning to find it containing someone else’s soggy three-piece suite.

That’s why I’m here.