We have a local authority-issued kitchen waste ‘caddy’, a bin just large enough for food scraps and peelings. The local authority supplies biodegradable liners on demand – actioned by us tying a yellow ‘flag’ to the main food and garden waste bin and waiting for the collection crew to drop a new roll of bags at the front door.

It doesn’t happen like that. The flag is tied and ignored for a few weeks. There’s a web form to complete which should spur the crew into action, but doesn’t on the next collection day.

So there’s an email address to, er… email. So I did that yesterday with this subject line:

“[my address] – food caddy bags not left”

I got a reply today:

“Good morning, | Thank you for your email | Please provide your address and postal code so I can look into this for you. | Apologies for the inconvenience.”

(I’ve thrown the response all onto one line for speed of posting).

As far as I know there are only 2 locations with my street’s name in the country and only one has a street number as high as mine, and there’s definitely only one in the very town to which I addressed my…

(big sighs)

My reply back was polite.

“[Preamble | my address] (as the subject line), [postcode] | name]”