"My Wheelie Bin's been totalled, man..."

That was what I said to the head vulture (first tow truck guy on the scene), but I'm getting ahead of myself...

I was rudely awoken at 04h30 on Saturday morning by a noise that sounded like someone taking a waste skip (big rubbish bin thingy) full of tins and glass and tipping it upside down.

At first, I thought I was dreaming but couldn't remember what I'd been dreaming about. Then I thought that maybe one of the bridge supports for the Gautrain Bridge, about 1km from the house, had finally succumbed to bad construction practices and come crashing down into the river, cranes, bad constructors, and all. But something bothered me...it didn't feel right.

Reluctantly, being the proper start of winter, I pulled on my gown and slippers, walked to the kitchen window, and saw...nothing.

I thought I might as well let the dogs out for a pee as I would then be able to sleep through to 8am, when the gardener was supposed to arrive. After letting them back in, suitably relieved, I looked out the kitchen window again, and saw...a little black lady in a tracksuit walking past the front gate. She got to the right hand side of the drive way and I was thinking "A little early to be going for a jog, I think", but then she turned around and started walking back down the hill again.

Curiosity got the better of me, so I opened the garage door, walked out into the dark, cold morning air and pressed the button for the main gate to open. Getting to the edge of the street, I noticed that our wheelie bin was totally destroyed, lying under the lamppost. At first, I thought that this little black lady and her mates had thrown a firecracker into it and it had exploded which would explain the noise that woke me up, but then I looked down the hill in the direction she had gone...and noticed her car lying on its roof on the opposite side of the road, about 50m from where I was standing.

Properly awake by now, I shouted down to her if everyone was okay and she replied in the affirmative. I trotted back in the house, got the cordless phone and dialled 082911 for the emergency services. Then I dialled 10177 (Metro services) and walked back down to where she was standing, perplexed, next to her upside down car, which now looked like a big sledge. From five feet away from her, I could smell the booze. I asked what had happened and she said that she had swerved out of the way of an oncoming car that was on her side of the road. "Yeah, right", I thought.

She had lost one of her shoes in the accident and started rummaging around inside the car looking for her mobile phone to call someone. I asked where she stayed and it turned out she lives in the complex literally 200m down the road. She said that she could not find her phone but wanted to call her sister to tell her what happened. Problem was, she could not remember her sister's number (see, technology and cell phonebooks aren't always best - how many cell numbers of people in your phonebook can you actually remember?) but she did remember her boyfriend's number. I dialled it for her and handed her the phone. Needless to say, he did not believe her and I took the phone from her and basically confirmed her story to him. We asked him to dial her mobile so that we could find her phone. That done, her phone had been lying right on the floor next to her, well actually it was the roof seeing as the car was upside down. She retrieved the phone and a small black book and started punching in numbers.

It turns out that she actually dialled her insurance (why that early, I have no idea) but while she was on the phone, the first of the vultures arrived, literally five minutes after I placed my call to the Metro guys. I asked them how they got here so fast and he said that her insurance had called her. I then told him that was crap and that she was on her phone to the insurance at that moment. They were either notified by a contact on the Metro servies side (who would get a kickback) or they were monitoring the police radio frequencies, both of which are illegal. Needless to say, the vulture could not reply to my statement and walked off with a smile on his face.

How the car ended up on its roof, became clear to me. We have a few large rocks along our pavement (to keep the bastard taxis off our lawn) and she'd done something like drop her phone or fallen asleep behind the wheel, but she was most certainly speeding. How she'd swerved, or why, is a mystery to me (not for one moment do I believe there was a car coming toward her on her side of the road) but she'd hit the first rock which landed a full 3m from where it normally sits, lost control, totalled the wheelie bin, just missed a lamp post, and hit a second rock on the opposite side of the driveway which had caused her car to flip over onto the passenger side and onto its roof, sledging its way 45m further down the road (I paced it out today). The second rock was found about 10m from its normal resting place. If you drew a straight line between where the two rocks originally lay, she must have missed the lamp post with millimetres to spare.

Anyway...I stood around for a little while, all the time watching my breath condensing on the cold air and started feeling the cold creeping under my gown, at which I thought "fuckit" and walked back into the house. I sat for a while, waiting for the police and emergency guys to arrive, noting the times of all of them. The first to arrive was the fire engine, 40mins after the call (it's standard practice for Metro to send out a fire engine to car accidents). The second was the ambulance, 45mins after the call. The police didn't even bother to arrive, as I found out later in the morning. I waited in the dining room until the fire engine and ambulance, then the tow truck with righted sledge in tow, all left and then went back to bed to read for a while. No way was I going to be able to sleep at that point. After about 15mins, around 06h15, I turned off the light and was woken by my alarm clock at 07h30.

Around midday, I wandered out of the front gate to retrieve what was left of the wheelie bin and found the number plate of the big, expensive, sledge. I pieced it together and went in to get my camera so that I could claim for the bin. These things cost around R900 a piece and there was no way I was going to foot the bill for it. When I got back out, I noticed that the number plate had gone. At first I thought that I had taken it inside with me, but then noticed the little figure walking up the hill, number plate waving in her hand.

I whistled at her to come back and talk, and she reluctantly started coming back toward me. I asked her how she was, looking at the big coffee jug that she was carrying in her hand. Obviously a hangover, I thought. She said she was fine and when I said that I had noticed that the police hadn't arrived to record the accident, she confirmed that they hadn't and she was on her way down to the Buccleuch Police Station (2km away from us!!) to report it. I told her I wanted a copy of the police report and the case number so that she could claim my wheelie bin in her insurance claim, and I could see she was thinking along the lines of "my car's almost a right off and you're worried about your wheelie bin, you dumb fuckin' honkie". I'm not letting her off with it and will be popping around now and then, or calling her, so that I get my new wheelie bin.

As you can see by the photos, the damage to the garden is minimal and will be sorted out this weekend. The wheelie bin, however, is a goner...