Landfill 1: Wombles 1 (Landfill win 5:4 after penalties)

Moving house inevitably generates a lot of rubbish for disposal, and my recent move was no exception. It also uncovers a number of items which strictly speaking aren't rubbish, but which can't be left in the house and which you have no desire to move with you, and this being a Sunday, you are unable to donate to your local charity shop or leave out for recycling. Such things are sadly destined to find their way to landfill.

Such was the fate of a disowned, rusting can opener. It did not belong to us, perhaps left hiding at the back of a cupboard by a previous tenant, or perhaps even left behind by the builders after finishing off their Spam and beers. Who knows? Without an owner, it was consigned to the refuse sack for a future of propping up the topsoil.

Or so we thought. However, moving house also uncovers fundamental differences in philosophy between the "I can live without it - chuck/sell/donate/get rid of it" school of thought and the "better not get rid of it, it might come in useful one day following the nuclear holocaust" school of thought. Moments following disposal, an adherent of the latter school, no doubt horrified at the prospect of a perfectly good can/bottle opener being thoughtlessly discarded to a future of slow oxidation and biodegradation, had retrieved it from the sack. It was in a perfectly usable condition, but we all have can openers with better functionality and which looked less likely to be harbouring Clostridium tetani, yet to wantonly re-discard the thing seemed a little, well, decadent.

As previously intimated, moving house exposes divisions and also brings difficult decisions. Rusty yet serviceable can openers fall into the pile of stuff classified as "collateral damage". The unwanted opener was returned to the rubbish sack in a swift, cloak-and-dagger style operation, as soon as the wannabe Womble was out of sight. Though glad to have got rid of the damned thing, I had a sneaking suspicion that the wanton disposal of usable implements was bound to come back to haunt me eventually.

It didn't take long.

All last week I had been opening the fridge door, parched after a long day of work (i.e. days of sitting in meetings whilst occasionally gently cajoling people towards my point of view) to find bottles of very lovely and enticing beers sitting teasingly at eye-level, chilled and just waiting to be drunk. Ready to drink, that is, but for want of an implement to remove the bottle tops. The image of the rusty can opener danced before my eyes, as did images of landfill sites being pored over by hordes of Wombles, triumphantly waving their rusty yet serviceable finds.

After a week of pathetically hunting through boxes for a bottle opener, I eventually succumbed to the need for instant beer and searched instead for alternative implements with bottle opening features. Exposed (trendy?) brickwork in the kitchen looked promising, but the mortar left no exposed edges suitable to open the bottle on. The granite worksurface looked like the sort of the thing the landlord probably would rather not have crown scratches on, the table likewise. The forks were too rounded and broad to get under the crown to prise off. I eventually found a small and fittingly rusty flat-heat screwdriver, which worked perfectly.

A beer later, I felt completely vindicated by the decision to chuck. Two beers later, my mental film reel of the goading Womble wielding a rusty can opener was replaced by a scene of Womble carnage - thousands of Wombles lying dead or dying on landfill, fatally stabbed or mortally wounded courtesy of the rusty can opener and its C. tetani population. I didn't think a third beer was required...

---
On another matter, I have no idea why on earth I thought a late night and a couple of beers was excellent preparation for spending four hours rowing on the Tideway early the following morning. Three days later, everything still hurts.