Burning the couch

When I saw two old suitcases sitting on the grass verge out front of our block tonight I thought our neighbours must be going on a retro-style holiday.

Then I saw a clam-shaped swimming pool, a straw handbag, and an empty toaster box and started muttering about the pigs who “keep dumping their shit outside our place TWO WEEKS before council cleanup”.  I mean, they’ve probably had this stuff laying around for EONS. But, now that they’ve FINALLY gotten around to having that big cleanup, they couldn’t possibly hold onto it until the council cleanup, which is ONLY TWO WEEKS AWAY.

 Then I calmed down and started thinking about that time we burned our old couch in our own personal dump…

You see, when I was five we moved to a little place called Waitaha Valley where there were no such things as rubbish trucks that drove by and picked up your rubbish at 6am every Wednesday.  We had our own personal rubbish-dump in the paddock behind our house.  In my memory it measures six by six by six foot.  And I’m sure it felt that big to Dad when he dug it out with a spade and a shovel.  

Every morning my brother Daniel or I would take a two litre ice-cream container full of rubbish, climb over the fence, trot across to the dump, empty it and run back.  It was an easy job, that got more exciting when our pet lamb Paddy grew into our agressive pet sheep Paddy. 

Paddy lived in the same paddock as the dump and he didn’t really like sharing it.  So,  we had to look out for Paddy before we climbed over the fence.  When the coast was clear, we ran as fast as we could, climbed up the tree next to the dump, checked the coast was clear again, climbed down the tree, emptied the rubbish into the dump and ran back across the paddock.

Daniel got caught once.  Paddy overtook him as he was running back to the house and jumped all over him.  I remember being quite scared Paddy was going to hurt him… he was a big sheep and Daniel was only six years old.  Luckily, Dad was there to save him.  I haven’t seen it, but I totally believe Black Sheep.

Anyway, just before we left Waitaha Valley four years after we arrived we had a bonfire at our dump.  And we burnt our couch!  God it was exciting.  I couldn’t believe that Mum and Dad would be prepared to burn something that I wasn’t even allowed to jump on.  And the best part was that we got to jump up and down on it like it was a trampoline for a whole evening the night before we burnt it.  It seemed like such an outrageous thing to do.  We had firecrackers, sparklers and everything.  This was before all the safety regulations around fireworks.     

I guess it seems like a strange thing to do.  I can only say that the couch must have been very old and decrepit and that must be why we burnt it… anyway, looking back, I think it was an appropriate goodbye to both the rubbish dump and the couch… and a lot more fun than putting it on the side of the road in front of someone Else’s place for a council truck to pick up.