Peter Rhodes on cottages, mansions and recycling yoghurt into bluebottles

According to my dictionary, the English definition of a cottage is “a small residence, a country residence.” In the US, “cottage” is a summer residence. In Australia it's a bungalow.

And in Windsor, a cottage is a stonking great sprawling mansion where the Cambridges will shortly be taking up residence. Their new pad, Adelaide Cottage, is a cottage in much the way that Chateau Rhodes is a chateau. In other words, it isn't.

Nor, I venture to guess, is it merely a four-bedroomed place, as officially described. If the architect could wring only four bedrooms out of this massive pile in 1831, he should have been sacked for incompetence.

“A triumph of hope over experience” is how Dr Johnson famously described a man marrying for the second time. It also applies to our new rubbish and recycling service. High on hope, I put the food caddy out for the third week. True to experience, it was ignored.

But not to worry. The council's “missed bins” hotline is on the case. They may not be able to collect one small bin from our kerb but within minutes of my reporting the oversight, they had issued two emails and given my case not one or two but four reference numbers. Meanwhile, uncollected bins nearby have become maggot-breeding stations and badger-feeding facilities. I suppose turning unwanted yoghurt into bluebottles is a sort of recycling.

More rubbish. I suppose I should bring you up to date on our epic trip to the tip, the one that, thanks to Covid regulations, had to be booked online in advance complete with proof of residency (driving licence, bus pass, etc) at the gate. Come the day there was no queue, orderly or otherwise.. Nobody asked to see our pre-printed tickets. No-one inspected our proof of residency. In short, the tip was operating exactly as it always did, apart from generating lots of bumf and tying us to the laptop for ages.

Wackiest wheeze of the week is the suggestion that GPs should issue vouchers to help hard-up patients pay for their gas and electricity. I can see it stretching the over-stretched NHS even further. Patient asks for voucher. GP declines. Patient thumps doctor, thus requiring the attention of another doctor.