Is there a more cleansing feeling than driving off from the tip, your former purchases and/or packaging safely ensconced in its appropriate skip?

Maybe its a sign of old age, but navigating the tip brings me more satisfaction than understanding a pension and the potential of a bit of bunce to come.

Round here, in Covid times, you need to bring your proof of address and join the queue. It only opens on certain days, so a quick check on Google starts the proceedings. I've got a Mini, so there's fuck-all in terms of boot space, but the rear seats fold down.

Car loaded up, set off and first thing you pass is the 'One Hour Wait' from this point sign. Swing round the corner and past the '30 Minutes Wait From This Point'. You're hoping for a full-on drive to the check point, but there's always around 8 cars in front of you, big cars, with the rear window full of Ikea drawers or canoes or last year's Xmas tree.

I know I've got twenty minutes to wait now, so the planning about dinner/ironing/dog walking/rearranging my wardrobe/backing up my hard-drive etc. swim round my head like eels in a cramped fish tank.

Cool, it's the bloke who looks like my late brother on checkpoint patrol. "What've you got?" "Erm... a bit of cardboard and some clothes..." I fight the urge to tell him that he looks like my brother and to tell him that there's some sweaters in the back of the car, bought only six months ago, that will suit him.

He tells me where they go, but I know, for I have journeyed from being a novice to a tip ninja. I pull into my allocated space and scan the vista. Ladies who don't know what the fuck they are doing, carrying too much, and worst of all, holding mixed-loads like the kids with cabbages on Crackerjack (it's chaos!). With them being invariably dressed in 'lounge-wear' I do a quick camel-toe/arse blimp and pop the boot.

Boom-drop off, boom-drop off, boom-drop-off, cardboard, metal, mixed recycling, and with the appropriate 'alright pal' to the skip captains, it's time to click the back seats back into place, pop in the parcel shelf, place the golf brolly so that it doesn't roll around, and shut the boot.

Back into the car, select some music, confident that the small delay earned due to tip-top tip technique is under my allocated time, seatbelt click and we're off out, past the cars just joining the queue in.

That exit point and the next five minutes feels like a clean sheet for the rest of the day. I've earned it, for I too was a tip novice once, wobbling round with pans in one hand, cardboard in another, blank expression, punch drunk GPS tracking revealing double trips, but no more.

Mind you, I'd be fucked if they changed the layout...