Saturday 7 November 2015

"The carport will need to be

cleared out," the Senior Cat informed me with a groan of massive proportions.
"Good," I told him. 
He glared at me.
We need to get the carport door and the mechanism which raises and lowers it replaced. Attempts to repair both failed. Brother Cat removed the mechanism when he was here. I have been waiting for the Senior Cat to do something about it ever since. It is not the sort of thing I interfere in. 
A friend of his turned up on Saturday morning to have a look at the problem. He has just had a new one installed at his place. They talked about it.
Yesterday the Senior Cat called the same firm - after getting a couple of outrageously expensive quotes from elsewhere. There was a man there when I arrived back from visiting the nursing home. His quote came in at around half the previous estimates and he took into account a couple of things they had not been interested enough to consider. The Senior Cat signed on the dotted line.
BUT....the carport now needs to be cleared of all the timber and the "spare drawers" and the other detritus the Senior Cat has collected "because it might be useful one day".
How this clearing away is going to be done is another story. The council's "hard rubbish" allows for two square metres in a financial year. The list of things they will not take is long. It has to be put out by 7am on the day of collection. All of those things mean it is not an option. What is more most of it is genuinely useful - to any sort of handyman or woodworker. 
The problem is that most of the handymen and woodworkers the Senior Cat knows have the same problem. They have too much. They have collected it over the years. All those useful things in the carport have been given to the Senior Cat - or he has "rescued" them. He didn't buy them. He doesn't want to give them away. They "might still be useful". 
It is his problem, not mine. I was given bags of cheap acrylic yarn at one stage. I could have kept it on the grounds it "might be useful" or that I "might use it one day". I knew the reality was that I wouldn't ever use it. I gave it to the local charity shop. It has been turned into useful things by other people. I still have too much yarn but it doesn't clutter the place up the way those drawers and pieces of timber and so on do.
I would like to suggest a small "skip" - one of those industrial bins - and just get rid of it. There are always people scouring the dump for "useful" things. I am sure those drawers would find a good home - in a carport belonging to someone else. 

No comments: