The wonder of waste!

“We nursery nurses have been put in the same band as the dustbin men.” Listening to the radio and a report about low pay and the equalization of women’s and men’s pay rates, one nursery nurse made this comparison to illustrate her appreciation of the effective demotion she felt she had endured.

The concept of equal pay for equal work is so obvious that it doesn’t merit discussion. The process by which equality is achieved and the perception of workers during the process is much more interesting and problematical.

The nursery nurse had a qualification which she felt was being totally ignored and I’m sure that there is a case to be answered, but I am much more interested in her use of bin men to show the extent of her sense of injustice. It was more revealing when she made the customary denial that she was denigrating bin men in her comparison and also admitted that in the wage band in which she had been put included other ‘professionals’ than bin men.

The nursery nurse seems to share a common view that no job is lower than a refuse collector: by a simple process of association, if you deal with rubbish then you must be rubbish yourself. Surely a false connection which would be angrily dismissed by the police, judges and the rest of the criminal justice system; school teachers; doctors and all the rest of the respected professionals who deal with things that are faulty or downright wrong!

‘Education’, we have been told from its etymological roots, is a ‘drawing out’; a process which seeks to find the knowledge inside a person and let them experience an ownership of the potentiality which already exists within an individual. Although I am not sure about that as a concept, I do like to think that this process is true in some areas. In my first year of teaching in Kettering Boys’ School I vividly remember in the good old days of CSE during one of the talks that had to be given on a pupil chosen subject, one of the boys deciding to give a talk on his father’s chosen field of professional interest: sewerage. He gave a fluent, informed and totally enthralling talk during which I heard more about nematode worms than I had previously heard in my life up to that point. He brought out the fascination of one area of human endeavour which is essential to life and yet ignored by the vast majority of people whose health and wellbeing is totally dependent on the efficient working of the system they choose to ignore.

That was a valuable lesson which has (sometimes) made me ponder on those areas of normal civilized existence that can easily pass you by.

Today, a Thursday is one of those days which encourage such thoughts. It’s a day which contains a little bit of magic for me. It’s bin day.

I have never really got over the simple pleasure of unpleasant, smelly rubbish being put out and, wonder of wonders, it simply disappearing!

Before you start to worry too much; I am perfectly well aware that the rubbish is not magically transformed into roses by the garbage goblins and that its removal is an ordinary human activity with men (usually but not exclusively) and trucks. Everyday, taking Toni to work I pass the entrance to the Lamby Way refuse and recycling depot, and sometimes get stuck behind those stunted electric, left hand drive sweeping machines that issue from the depot like shrunken, conceited milk floats on a preset robotic course ignoring with contempt all other road users.

But I still find it wonderful (in the true sense of the word) that rubbish is picked up and disposed of with the (variable) efficiency of our local collectors on a (at the moment) weekly basis.

Simple pleasures! Don’t ask about the cost!