Ordinariness
Ordinary life for a retired Yorkshireman in 2025. Phoebe had been deposited at 8.15am before her mama took Margot to nursery school and then carried on to work. When Bad Grandpa came downstairs, Phoebe was glued to the television and would not speak to me. Later, she said she doesn't like me in my dressing gown - she only likes me when I am showered and dressed. My main mission of the morning was to take a huge builders' bag of plastic waste to the nearest council recycling centre at Blackstock Road, Gleadless. In refuse collection there has been an ongoing industrial dispute for months now - the upshot being that there is nowhere to deposit one's soft plastic waste apart from at one of the city's five recycling centres. By the way, we used to call them "dumps". Late morning I arrived at Blackstock Road and the queue was not too bad. Ten minutes later with our waste plastic conscientiously deposited I was away. The ridiculousness of having to burn petrol...