The Oakhaven Gazette

FORTY-EIGHT POUNDS A ROUND, plus fifty pence a bin over fifty-five, and there is now a wagon in this ward to earn it on.

It is parked on Tollerton Rise. It is painted properly — OAKHAVEN CITY COUNCIL down one side, REFUSE COLLECTION under it, the arms on the door, chevrons across the tailgate and the plate OZ221 UAC on the front. Eleven separate pieces of lettering and livery went on it this week.

There are two men stood at the back of it in orange.

They were in yellow a week ago. Somebody who does the job for a living said the yellow was wrong, and the crew are in hi-viz orange now, boots and all.

The lifting gear was wrong as well, and worse than wrong — it was running backwards. A bin went up and the tipping action turned it the wrong way. There was nothing at the top for it to strike, either, and striking the bar at the top is the whole point: that is the knock that empties it.

Both faults have been put right. The lift now works the way a lift works.

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And not one bin has been emptied.

Nobody has been taken on and no vacancy is posted at the depot. The rota is seven rounds over seven days, green one week and brown the next, each bin done once a fortnight. On paper.

There is, however, a training film. Two of them, in fact, made for new starters and currently being re-cut.

“They have made a video about emptying my bin,” said Shirley of Radworth Road. “They have not emptied my bin.”

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ALSO INSIDE

Well covered

The council's answer to eighty-eight grand down a hole on the waste ground is a sign. Page 3.

Sitting tenant

Sit down with Edward in the Slag & Slurry and you may not get up again. We print the way out. Page 2.

Pot luck

There is a snooker table in the snooker club. Nobody is in there to play on it. Page 2.

AMUSEMENTS · PENNY DROP

Reel money

FIVE FRUIT MACHINES have gone into Radworth this week and there is not a penny of anybody's in any of them yet.

Three stand in Penny Drop Amusements and two in the bookies, under three different names. ACORN FORTUNE is the red one. COUNTRY ESCAPES is green and invites you to take the scenic route. RIVER OF RICHES is blue and reckons that is where the money flows.

They have also been turned up.

The machine in the pub was too quiet, so every one of its fourteen sound cues has been lifted by about five and a half decibels and its music by five. That is roughly twice as loud as it was, and whether it now carries further across the room than anybody wants is a question nobody has sat down and answered.

There is a ten-pence pusher in as well — COLD SNAP, two decks, a visible cascade and better than thirteen hundred coins sat on it. The way the coins move has been played three times and signed off.

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SNOOKER · THE BAULK LINE

Pot luck

THERE IS A TABLE IN THE SNOOKER CLUB. A full-size one, twenty-two balls on it, and they behave like snooker balls rather than like marbles.

It has been partly played. The cue works, the balls run true and the club's front door has been walk-through since the doors went in a fortnight ago.

There is nobody in there.

No marker, no table money, no light over the baize that anybody has switched on. Walk in, and it is you and a table.

“That is the club Mick has been asking about since July,” said Mitchell of Bleachfield Close. “He wanted somewhere to go. He has got somewhere to stand.”

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PUBLIC HOUSE · FOUNDRY END

Sitting tenant

A MAN SAT DOWN AT EDWARD'S TABLE IN THE SLAG & SLURRY LAST WEEK AND COULD NOT GET BACK UP.

It is not a joke and it is not the drink. It has happened twice now and the second time he had not touched a glass. Sitting down at that table has been, for the moment, a one-way trip.

Here is the way out, and you will not guess it.

You have to look almost straight down at your own lap — about forty-six degrees below level, which is further than anybody looks by accident — and then get up. Nothing in that pub tells you so.

The paper prints this rather than waiting for somebody to sort it out, because a man stuck in a chair would like to know tonight.

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BOOKMAKER · PLOT R7

Odds and sods

LAST TENNER BETS HAS BEEN DONE OUT. A hundred and six separate things went into that shop: carpet, rug, wallpaper, a dado rail, a ceiling, a lowered branded raft over the roulette, a betting counter, a wall of screens, signage inside and vinyls on the windows.

Forty-two textures, thirty-seven materials and sixteen light fittings. There is an A-board out on the pavement.

The A-board is the most honest thing about it.

It stands on the pavement telling you the shop is there, which it is, and saying nothing about anybody being behind the counter, which nobody is.

THE WASTE GROUND · THE HOLE

Well covered

TRACEY OF LIMEKILN CLOSE ASKED THIS COUNCIL TO FENCE THE HOLE OR FILL IT IN. She has been sent a sign.

It went up on the waste ground this week, three and a half metres from the middle of the well and standing two and a half metres proud of the grass, with half a metre of post in the ground. Rusted post, battered face, skull and crossbones.

DANGER TO LIFE. DO NOT ENTER. OAKHAVEN CITY COUNCIL.

In fairness to them, some other things did happen. The well-head itself has been done in proper rusted iron rather than whatever it was before, and its lid has been moved onto a side hinge so it swings out of the way instead of sitting on top of everything.

And the ladder now reaches the bottom. It has twenty whole rungs and then a short one, cut down so the last rung ends on the floor rather than through it. That is a small thing and it matters: the previous arrangement stopped short.

The paper's advice has not changed. Stay out of it.

Eighty-eight thousand six hundred pounds is still down there and the best of it is forty-odd metres down. There is a fourteen-metre drop past the foot of the first ladder. A sign is not a fence.

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TRANSPORT · GOPHER CABS

Cab stand-off

TWO CABS MET ON A RADWORTH STREET THIS WEEK AND BOTH OF THEM STOPPED.

Not slowed. Stopped. Neither would go round the other and neither would back up, and there they sat, nose to nose, with the meters presumably running.

It is not one driver being awkward. It happens every time.

The firm runs ten cars across six hundred and ninety-seven addresses and they are perfectly good at everything else — they obey the one-ways, they take the roundabouts the right way round, and they pull up on your side of the road so you step out onto the pavement rather than into the traffic.

They simply cannot pass one another. No fix has been announced.

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REFUSE · THE WAGON

Not so bright

THE ORANGE REFLECTORS DOWN THE SIDE OF THE NEW WAGON DO NOT LIGHT UP.

They are there. They are the right colour. But they do nothing in the dark, which is precisely when a wagon stopped in a narrow terrace street needs to be seen, and this round is meant to start at six in the morning.

The wagon carries no working lamps at all.

No headlamps, no interior light in the cab. On a December morning on Tollerton Rise that is not a detail.

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RETAIL · STILL WAITING

Nothing doing

TWO SHOPS THIS PAPER REPORTED OPEN A WEEK AGO ARE STILL NOT SELLING ANYTHING.

Chish & Fips has its counter, its board and its ten lines, ten till ten, seven days, and has served nobody at all. Boss Man's has five hundred and sixty-eight different things on its shelves, a man behind the counter and no till.

Between them that is the best-stocked street in the ward and not one transaction on it.

IN BRIEF

Bins out, bins in

The bins are out on both kerbs of Tollerton Rise, green and brown together, which is not how a fortnightly rota works. Two of them were found on the back of the wagon and have been put back where they belong.

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SPORT

Course of inaction

The golf club above Harewood Avenue has eighteen holes, two hundred and seventy-four trees and a clubhouse, and still nobody has played a round on it. Thirty-eight pounds a weekday, forty-eight at the weekend, if anybody ever takes the money.

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THE EDITOR WRITES

A sign, a video and a snooker table

This has been a week of the right thing arriving one step short. Tracey asked for a fence and got a sign. Mick asked for a snooker club and got a table with nobody in the room. Shirley asked for her bin emptying and got a wagon, a uniform and a training film.

None of that is nothing. A week ago the wagon was a rate of pay on a piece of paper; it is now a painted lorry on a real street with two men stood behind it, and the lift on the back of it works the way a lift is supposed to work because somebody who does the job for a living sat down and explained why it did not.

But nobody has emptied a bin, and that is now three editions of this paper.

We will keep printing it until somebody does.

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A sign is not a fence

I asked for the hole on the waste ground to be fenced or filled in. I have been given a sign with a skull on it, two and a half metres of it, three and a half metres from the edge.

I am fifty-one. I can read. The problem was never that I did not know the hole was there.

TRACEY, Limekiln Close

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Stuck fast

I sat down with Edward on the Wednesday and I was there an hour. Not out of politeness.

I am told the trick is to look at your own knees. I would like whoever put that chair in to explain to this paper why looking at your own knees is how a man stands up.

MICK, Foundry End

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Two cabs, one street, no winner

I watched two Gophers face each other on Popplewick Terrace for the best part of a quarter of an hour. Neither moved. I went in, put the kettle on, came back out and they were still there.

If the drivers cannot sort it out between them, put a priority sign up and be done with it.

IAN, Thornyholt Boulevard

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The orange is right

I will say one thing for them. The new crew uniforms are orange and they are the correct orange, which is more than this estate usually manages.

Now put a light behind the reflectors on the side of that wagon before somebody walks into it in the dark.

GORDON, Kimberton Road

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Still no children

Fourth time. We have a snooker table, five fruit machines, a temple, a golf course and eighty-eight grand under the waste ground.

No kids. Not one.

TRACEY, Limekiln Close

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The tags are still up

Fifth week. Both ginnels, the gable ends, the shutters. Not one of them painted over.

I have given up asking and I have given up withdrawing the letter. Print it every week.

HOLLY, Marlpit Boulevard