The big green container

What an enticing title.  If you even clicked on it, which you must have or you wouldn't be reading this, you must be having a slow day in the office/at home/wherever.  As I have now got your attention, though, let me remind you of posts from a year back, when the big green garden waste container was deposited at the end of our street and our neighbour, Herr NN, was positively orgasmic about its arrival.  If you have been following this blog from the beginning, you may remember that he would not rest until we had also made the acquaintance of the container and trailed down the street with a full wheelbarrow.

Well, it's there again (it has a summer break, for who needs to dispose of garden waste then).  Usually I wait for CG to do all the recycling/waste/rubbish jobs, because he is a man and they don't seem to mind as much as women do.  But he wasn't there and we had a huge pile of old foliage, so I piled my barrow high and trudged off to the BGC.  Whilst I was struggling to dump my load therein, the toothless, be-hearing-aided man who 'works' there came to my assistance.  Haven't you got a husband to do this, he asked.  Sure, I said.  But he's away at the moment.  Ah, said the man.  Would that be the Preuss (Prussian) who works down in Garmisch?*  That's him, I said.  And I am from England.  At this his eyes lit up.  Apparently his grandson had been there recently, and what had impressed him the most?  That the buses stop wherever you want them to.  I asked him if he meant London.  Yes indeed, he said.  That is England, isn't it?  Mmm.  I thought of shattering his illusions for a moment, and telling him that his grandson must have availed himself of the expensive hop on, hop off tourist bus service in old London town, but then it occurred to me that it was the first time a Bavarian had said something positive about England, so I let it lie.  He's far too old to go and find out for himself. Doing a neat turn with my barrow I tried to leave, but he'd pinned me down (metaphorically speaking only, I hasten to add) and I had to listen to a further ten minutes of dialogue about the bus-riding grandson who was training to be a famous actor.  Finally somebody pitched up with a trailer full of tree branches and he lost interest in me, so I trundled off back home.

*Bavarians call anyone who comes from the North of Germany Prussian (Bavarian: Preiss), and woe betide you if you are one - it's better to be English, and that's saying something in these parts.