The team tasked with removing my household recycling clearly dislike me…

A week or so ago, they appeared to drop kick a bag full of our rotting food down the street, before leaving it for Claire to clean up.

Most recently the good-for-nothing-so-and-sos left behind our cardboard recycling, despite taking away all our neighbours’ rubbish. I guess that I should be grateful for the small mercy they didn’t throw each bit of cardboard onto the roof of our house. Would that have caused them greater amusement than playing garbage ball with a bag of decomposing leftovers?

Worse still, is that our food recycling box has been stolen! I’m certain that the recycling dudes didn’t take it – they can probably get a brand new one whenever they like – all jobs have their perks.

They do have an awful habit of leaving our box wherever they can be bothered – i.e. not by our house where we left it.

As a result, Claire has to hunt for the box every week once it’s been emptied. Not too much of a problem, except last Friday it couldn’t be found. Some swine had nabbed it!

I’m not too aware of the resident-bin man etiquette. Perhaps I should have tipped them at Christmas. Place a fiver underneath a bag full of cold, stinking baked beans? What about at Easter? Should I have left a chocolate egg out? No doubt I would be fined for mixing cardboard, foil and food waste.

Do I confront the bin men? Yes, I have resorted to calling them that – I don’t mean any disrespect. Shout at them from my doorway, while shaking my fist in the air. These men are pretty burly – I would worry that if things turned nasty, someone would get hurt. I would hate to be responsible for injuring one of them!

I think it’s best to take the British approach. Write a letter of complaint. Although as I don’t live in 1978, I’ll send an email instead.