Do or be done to
Bin theft, coastal erosion, general shenanigans
Only in Rhyl
Since I’ve been perma-banned from facebook by an over-zealous Zuckerbot, I have no idea if there is indeed a page called Only in Rhyl, where people submit grainy doorbell video footage of their neighbours doing weird shit. But if there is, I'm pretty sure my sister and I got on it this week.
In the grainy footage, you would see two slightly mad-looking women, a stylish slim-mom and a menopausal powerlifter, lurking suspiciously in their front garden. The powerlifter gestures towards next door’s garden, and the slim-mom leans over the wall and hauls out the neighbour’s wheelie bin. The two women run back inside the house. Thirty seconds later, they re-emerge, and the powerlifter comically wrestles a different, smaller wheelie bin into next door’s front garden.
In my sister’s defence, Operation Bin Swap was all my idea. And in my defence, the next door neighbours have moved out, the house has been sold to developers, and future residents will have no idea about the bigger wheelie bin. Especially since I sneaked out in the middle of the night to peel off the house number stickers.
They say crime doesn’t pay. But have they ever squeezed four weeks’ worth of household waste into a half-size wheelie? Walk a mile in my shoes, why don’t you.
I am a Rock
I’ve been keeping my beach hauls on the down low ever since some online busybody threatened to dob me in to the rozzers (crime slang; you wouldn’t get it) for my contribution to coastal erosion. But I couldn’t resist this stunning green quartzite beauty that grinned up at me on a recent walk.
It’s fair to say I’m obsessed with rocks. They are beautiful and ancient and also quite fascinating. (A bit like me.) Indeed, this week I embarked on a rock-based art project that I fully expect to take over my life. I’ve had to put Anna Karenina on hold so I can read my Dorling Kindersley Guide to Rocks and Minerals. I thought there'd be less tragedy in the latter, but so far the plot seems to be: big bang, Earth becomes a planet, serendipitous moon, bunch of rocks, atom bomb. So I don't know now.
No one said I couldn’t
It’s not strictly illegal, but at the weekend we met up with my nephew in Congleton, which sounds like a Victorian disease contracted from a spell in the colonies, but is actually quite nice. We went to Glebe Farm, where my sister and I had a go on some tiny electric cars, driving round and round a tiny circuit until the £2.50 charge ran out. I think the little cars are supposed to be for children, but no one tried to stop us.
My nephew drives a Toyota Crown that he’s imported from Japan. Apparently there are only around 20 of these cars in the whole of the UK, so if you happen to see one driving by, there’s a one in twenty chance that you’ve seen my nephew. If the driver is a wild-looking young man wearing odd-coloured baseball boots (pink on the left foot, green on the right) then there’s a 100 percent chance you are looking at someone closely related to me, but not my actual fault.
The car is very luxurious inside. It even has a small TV and DVD player in the dashboard. Sadly, they are tuned to Japanese frequencies and my nephew can’t get them to work, or I would have suggested he play a roaring log fire. I’m going to assume it’s illegal to watch a DVD on the M6 or even the A55, but I love the idea of a cosy fire, or maybe a calm aquarium to gaze at as the road zooms chaotically by your windscreen. Wildlife documentaries would also be a good choice.
Should be illegal
Lifting heavy weights is what I do for fun these days. My trainer has found a new app where he can program lifting sessions for me to do in his absence. I did one the other day and left some feedback. “Too easy, Ben,” I wrote, and added a little winky face because I knew fine well he would be deeply annoyed by this. He once said to me, “Your pain is my hobby,” and I don’t think he was joking.
This week, I’ve been lifting more and more of the stack. On the leg extension machine, I’ve lifted exactly half the stack, 56.6kg, to be exact. This is the equivalent of putting a small dinosaur on your feet and slowly raising it up and down. It hurts! The burn in your quads is insanely painful. But then it’s so much fun when you stand up, shrug, and say to your trainer, “Yeah, that was no problem.” Winky face.
Mitigating circumstances
My sister did some art using my materials and halfway through she declared it was so bad that she was actually making a mockery of the art world. I told her this was as good an artist’s manifesto as any.
My nephew has inherited his mom’s perfectionist tendencies when it comes to art, but the Nerd Kingdom has bequeathed him an obsession with drawing Pokemon. I gave him a piece of A1 paper on which to draw all nine evolutions of Eevee, but by the time he got to Jolteon, he was ready to headbutt the wall. I told him drawing is meant to be fun. Apparently, this wasn’t helpful.
I am constantly committing crimes against art, but I’ve come to see all my mistakes as part of the process of slowly improving. I even had a moment of reflection in which it struck me that I am, in fact, an artist now. A bad one. But still.
As an artist, I’m obviously not subject to the petty laws that rule ordinary people. On the other hand, if the rozzers are reading this, it was all my sister’s idea, and I told her not to do it.
Until next week, I remain your faithful chronicler. If you like this sort of thing, press the heart button, subscribe and share. Or upgrade and show the world what a fine, upstanding person you are.
In our previous house, our neighbour - a marine - accused me of putting some rubbish in his bin (which I had done tbf) and got really annoyed. Very tense with him after that. I’d never dare graduate to bin stealing now.
A piece of unsolicited advice. If you are going to embark on a life of crime, you may not want to post the details on a widely read forum.