Hello, my name is Fred and i have been invited here today to talk to you by the NSPCWDI.
In case you didn't know, the NSPCWDI is the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Waste Disposal Items. The work of the NSPCWDI is wide and varied taking in such different spheres as the suicidal tendencies of your normal household bin to the loneliness of the outside composter and also to the subject which is closest to me heart and which i want to talk to you about today. Today i am here to talk to you about the frightening new epidemic of mental illness amongst wheelie bins.
First of all i must admit that i am myself a sufferer of this condition and so i am in an ideal position to explain both how this phenomenon occurs and how best we can tackle the problem.
Your average wheelie bin is a quiet , almost antisocial character who enjoys spending most of his time by himself and so he is well suited to the work he does. But it is exactly these qualities which can lead to the most severe illness problems we envcounter. To demonstrate this i would like to introduce to you a case we dealt with recently at the NSPCWDI.
This is the case of Jason the wheelie bin, he has given us permission to use his original statement that he wrote for us when he first came to one of our meetings, here it is;
Hi, my name is Jason, as you can see i'm a wheelie bin, um, but today i'm not a very happy wheelie, in fact most days i don't feel a very happy bin, its been going on for nearly five years now. It all started when i was a young bin on a nice suburban estate, based in a large household with mum and dad right beside me in the backyard. Then one day i got put on the back of a lorry and taken to the other side of town, on a not so nice estate. I was used to household waste. I'd never had anything more offensive than a couple of bottles of red wine put in me. Now, out of the blue, i was having needles and syringes put in me on a daily basis and dogs fouling around my wheels. I remember feeling very, very violated. And then one day, suddenly i found i wanted them to put their needles and syringes inside me.. and their tablets and all sorts really. I didn't realise at the time but i had become a waste junkie...
At this point Jason put his lid down and started to cry. Brenda, our trained wheelie bin counselor managed to calm him down and he resumed his story;
Anyway, i started talking to people as they went past, begging them to give me a fix. I know we're not meant to talk out like that but i guess we've all done it late at night, when your lonely. You know the drunk won't remember in the morning, you think it won't hurt. The first couple of times i tried people just ran away but then one evening someone stopped and started talking to me, like i mattered, like i was important. Like i wasn't rubbish. Before long this person was coming every evening and giving me a fix as often as i wanted. At first he gave me a hit for nothing but soon he wanted something in return.
Well to cut a long story short, he became my pimp, you wouldn't believe how many humans want to have sex in a wheelie bin...
We'll stop Jason's account there. His information led us to indentify one of the ringleaders of the bin pimping trade. This Mr Big, who cannot be named for legal reasons, us currently facing trial and will soon be looked away from any bins for a long time.
Jason is currently receiving counselling for his various problems and he's just come off the game in the past few days. It makes you think doesn't it. Next time you see three of four bins lined up by the side of the road together, don't just presume the dustman's coming to get them. Maybe they're being used like Jason to give selfish humans a kick without any thoughts to the consequences.
It's part of the ongoing work of the NSPCWDI that we are looking for ways to give long term care to bins like Jason, finding them new homes if possible. The trouble is some bins are so badly traumatised by their experiences that they can no longer return to their previous lives. What future is there for a bin with no bag i hear you ask? We are hoping to open a care garden for sick and elderly bins sometime in the future. This state of the art facility may one day be able to give some bins the closure to their problems that they crave.
Jason is just one of a number of bins of all sorts of shapes and sizes that are being abused or have developed mental health problems. In many ways i was luckier than Jason. I developed a fairly acute form of schizophrenia in which i imagined i was in fact two wheelie bins instead of one. All day long i would yell at people "No, i'm a glass only bin, plastics go in him next to me"
Before long iwas section by the local household waste department and sent to a mental institute for bins, but that didn't help me becuase they kept putting plastic wrappers in me when you can see that Fred here next to me has plastics written on him. I am a glass only wheelie bin. Then they decided i was a paranoid schizophrenic but i soon set them straight on that count. There was nothing wrong with me, everyone else was just out to get me.
In a last ditch attempt to break my spirit they sent me to solitary confinement but even then they got that wrong. Instead of being by myself i was joined by Fred the plastics bin so it wasn't even solitary confinement. There was two of us.
After a week or two of us being in solitary together we were joined by a third, female, wheelie bin called Freda. She was a real surprise to me and the other Fred. She was something neither of us had seen before, a newspaper recycling bin. Suddenly it all made sense. The three of us could cope with any waste. We could live together in waste wonderland!
All this time they were pumping me full of medication saying that i was still ill and that Fred and i shouldn't be together any more. But they never gave Fred any medication did they? They just pumped me full of pills and tried to lift my lid for plastics. Heathens.
As you can see, i made a complete recovery and am standing before you as a completely reformed wheelie bin, plus his twin, Fred.
But i must finish, not on my own tale of woe but on the wider story of bin abuse. Bins like Jason need more help, they are a neglected section of society. Less money is spent on helping wheelie bins who have been the victims of abuse than is spent on star fish mining of the north Scottish coast. Please give genorously and help to right the wrongs of those who have gone before you.
Oh and bring back Freda.
Fred said she was a mole to catch us out, but i know she was a bin...
Moles don't have wheels.