The picture above was the scene in our street first thing this morning.
If you don't live in Leeds, you may not be aware that the local refuse collectors are on strike over pay.
It will be five weeks on Tuesday since our bins were lifted - i.e. back in August - and this is not ideal when you're living with a 15-month-old boy who gets through a lot of nappies (now I've got your attention).
I've been in two minds about the whole thing. As a Council Taxpayer and someone keen to ensure that his family is not struck by the plague in the coming days, I'm not pleased. (I'm equally not happy about the fact that, according to Leeds City Council, 95% of households will by today have had their bins emptied by contractors - leaving our street in the 5% not so fortunate).
On the flip side, I have inherent sympathy for binmen because, for six glorious years whilst still a student, I spent my summers hanging off the back of refuse lorries as a temporary employee of Coleraine Borough Council.
In addition to emptying house bins, the "Wombles" - as we were known by all and sundry - also cleaned the beaches along the beautiful Causeway Coast, picked up litter along the sides of roads and shined the public bogs. And it was wonderful.
In fact, below you can see some snaps from an end-of-summer Womble night out in the early 1990s - I'm the one at an angle (for some reason) in the top left-hand corner. Thankfully my particularly bad parting is just out of view.
One of the best things about being a Womble (shut up!) was the chance to work with some of the full-time staff. As a 17-year-old, as I was when I started, there was something rather nice about being treated as an equal by men twice and three times your age. You got to know about their lives, their families, their hopes and their fears. And they were the salt of the earth with, almost always, a wicked sense of humour.
Their pay and jobs were placed under threat during my time there and it bothered me deeply. So much so that I wrote my entire undergraduate dissertation on this very subject.
I don't know any binmen in Leeds so I'm not aware if they're as decent or entertaining as my former refuse collecting colleagues in Coleraine. But I don't wish them any particular harm - so long as our bin gets emptied on Tuesday.
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