Other What Makes Your Life, Meh?

TIL - I am unable to dispose of an old mattress legally at the local skips, without first obtaining a booking slip for a 1 hour time slot several days hence, and also has my car's number plate printed on it.
( And people wonder why fly-tipping is on the increase! )

 

Bought a small Karcher from auction for a very reasonable £24. I then ordered a £15 snow foam lance to fit, longer hose and some snow foam in preparation to washing a very dirty black car. Waited all day yesterday for Amazon to turn up, he kept getting delayed further and further back so 1 stop away at 2:30pm turned into 5:30pm.

Never mind, still nice enough out to wash the car, get all my gear together ready to go just need to plug the hose up. Too bloody small.... sent me the wrong one and it's half the size of the one I already had.

Grrrr... probably for the best because I feel absolutely wiped out today. Lots of gardening a building flatpack yesterday has taken it out of me

 

It really doesn't help. I was shocked to find that @Byron C had to make an appointment to to to the tip for any reason in Cardiff. I was going to pop by and he said that he'd be going to the tip at 12.30, which sounded very precise.
Conversely, our local tips are now allowing you to take 2 bags of rubble or plasterboard for free. Until 1st Jan this year it was all chargeable, so there is some recognition that if you make it easier to uset the tip, flytiping will be reduced.
I gather that fly tipping costs about 10x as much to dispose of compared to the tip.

In other meh news, I am still fighting the council over my son's parking ticket from Jan 4th. He was late back to the car after work at the pub as he had to look after a pi$$ed customer who fell and needed an ambulance. He appealed twice online with no apparent response. He's now travelling for 5 months in S E Asia and received an escalation letter as he hadn't paid the fine that he didn't know was still live or not...

I appealed and heard nothing, so emailed my local councillor who stirred it all up. Received a couple of emails last week and letter at the end of the week to say that they couldn't talk to me as he hadn't given me written permission to sort it in his absence.
In the same post a rejection letter came addressed to him, they will only reassess the situation if the paramedic or hospital send evidence of the case. I have replied saying that this is an unreasonable and impossible request as it would breach GDPR regs as my son wasn't the patient or a relative of the patient. I suggested that they were making requests that would be absolutely outside data protection
Who's ever heard of a receipt from a paramedic/ambulance/A&E???

They have at least suggested he pays the initial lower charge and nothing escalated. I think that we will have to pay, my friend who's an ex council employee says that they are not likely to give in and hang on terrier like.

 

I'm in Edinburgh and you have to book a slot at the tip here too. It's free and there's almost always slots available even at no notice, so while it's a slight hassle it's not deadly - we've even booked a slot en route to the tip

 

Sadly, it seems to be a manual booking process here in N Wales. And the council offices don't open on weekends

 

Oh, that is... rubbish

 

It's worse. Slots are only available between 10am & 4pm. Most people work till 5.

 

Last time we had a mattress to get rid of, we couldn't take it to the tip. We had to pay the council £20 for someone to come round and pick it up.

 

Mine does this for "large appliances" (dead washing machines, fridges, etc). £40 for up to 3, but I have to get them out of the house by myself.

 

Council here are pretty good where I am, you just turn up, only things they don't take are plasterboard (contains gypsum) nor paint. But there's another council run tip 20 minutes drive from the local one that takes everything apart from commercial waste, including paint, even household food/recycling waste. Taken many a mattress too. I couldn't imagine the faff of having to book in each time I went, I think that is adding massively to the fly tipping problem.

 

That's really poor. Our tips (there are 3 in Edinburgh) are open 7 days from 8am to 5.30pm.

 

The tip is open at the weekends, but weekday slots end at 4pm and I don't want to hang onto this thing all week!

 

That sucks, out tip is open 4 days a week, no booking necessary and will accept anything

 

It started during COVID, in order to enforce distancing and manage numbers - so many more people at home meant a lot of people clearing out their old junk, or doing DIY, or what have you. Then bookings just... never seemed to go away.

It's not such a hassle any more. It's all booked online, the tip's open until 1800, and you can usually book on the same day (or the day before at the very worst). It's also now a hell of a lot easier to actually get in and isn't anywhere near as packed. There used to be queues for the tip snaking back everywhere, and once you got in you'd find yourself with the smallest amount of room you could possibly squeeze a car in while still being able to open the door. Every time we've gone since bookings came along there's been no queue, no waiting, and plenty of space to park well away from the dickbrain with a boot full of timber that he keeps nearly smacking other people's cars with.

 

That is good to hear, just a matter of a little forethought.

 

Same here, two recycling centres/tips now that you book online between 9-6 7 days a week.

Alot less hassle as no free for all and they always point you to the right bins for your stuff.

You can take bigger stuff too if you can get it there. Last time I looked as we can't it was £8 I think to have a super king picked up but luckily a charity came for that as it was in good nick.

 

The meh continues.
Yesterday's draftiness spent until after 3am trying to convince the tree in my back garden that it really really wanted to come through my bedroom window.
Guess it's time to hire a guy with a chainsaw and a woodchipper.

With all that in mind, my office t-shirt choice of the day is displayed below:-

 

That's why I switched to AMD!

 

The way you say that makes me think you've made it your life's mission to find something they won't.