Wombling Free

I have gone all out on the litter front this week. The "Adopt-a-street" litter picker got a dusting off [our road has very little litter so doesn't need doing all that often thankfully] and a quick whip round soon got it all licked back into shape. The wind had lifted some of the contents of a skip in the carpark so that was seen to and it produced a nice fat wodge of clean bubblewrap which came home with me. Mr GBT will soon use that up for his orders!

Due to my ever changing work pattern I have continued to sort the bottle top recycling we receive for Sussex Green Living [free Terracycle schemes] in my garage. It might sound a bizarre way to spend one's free time, but actually it's surprisingly meditative. Everything's become hugely popular over the last couple of years and we have long since passed the point where I could still do it on my own and these days there's a whole bunch of lovely volunteers called the Wombles [I called them it originally for the Whatsapp group] who meet twice a week at the local Unitarian church. We have a special shed up there and it's all very organised. What used to take me 40 hours a month [which was still quite a lot sometimes] now takes them 40 hours a week. Unfortunately all my contact has been virtual so far as I've not been around up until now, but my schedule has just changed once again which will mean I can be around every other Friday afternoon.....

With this new window available to me I wasted no time and finally got down to meet my fellow Wombles [I'm known as the Original Womble and the lovely lady who runs the team is the Chief Womble😀]. Well what a fabulous group of people and who knew you could bond over stuffing hundreds of empty crisp packets into boxes eh! With SGL being a voluntary group people have been permitted to continue to meet up outside even in lockdown provided that the numbers are restricted and social distancing is adhered to. Some weeks the weather hasn't played ball, but on Friday it was sunny and warm in the sheltered spot where we were working. It was just such a joy to be able to freely converse and socialise in a small group of people who are very much on the same wavelength as me and we even stopped for tea and biscuits. It was an odd sensation of being weirdly familiar yet also a novelty. Am aiming to touch base once a month with them from now on.

Arilx