Colm O'Regan: Timber from the neighbour's skip? Or the crooked timber of humanity?
Colm O'Regan: "Apart from asking permission, there is a certain etiquette that needs to be understood with taking timber from skips..."
There’s a moment before you knock on a stranger’s door, when you’re suddenly aware of what you look like.
I’m particularly suspicious when I open the front door myself, too. I’ve been told I have RBF (resting bollocks face).
The shoe was on the other foot last week.
There was me in my Saturday Dad Slovenliness, holding a sliced pan I’d just bought in the shop; ringing the Ring.
The woman who answered went through all the flickers of micro expressions wondering who was this spailpín at the door.
I was a bit tongue-tied, and didn’t really introduce myself as a neighbour and not a nutter.
“The skip”... I pointed to the skip.
...”the skip?” she asked.
I think she thought I was complaining about the skip first.
It’s the default feeling if you’re ever having work done to the place — that something has nudged an on-the-edge neighbour over the edge.
“I… the timber — can I take the timber from the skip…?”
I gestured, waving the sliced pan. It was all very unbecoming.
"Work away," she said — the magic words you want to hear from anyone with a skip.
'Work away' is also one of my favourite phrases in Hiberno-English. It just means 'carry on'.
But is gentler. It respects the work. The work in this case is taking timber from a skip.
*record scratch* Yes, it’s me. You probably wondered how I ended up in this situation.
I’m the fella who walks past your house and if you’ve a skip with dry untreated timber in it, then you might get a knock.
At the moment I only have the skills to saw it up and put it in the stove.
Maybe one day I’ll whittle a chair or build a bird box, but right now I’m elemental. I’m digging for fire. Foraging for fuel.
Yes, I’m embarrassed. Yes, I’m carrying turkey slices (I also was at the butcher) but that timber is as dry as Cromwell’s Christmas.
So with the permission of the homeowner I’m on it like a young lad at Halloween.
Although I don’t try this kind of stuff at Halloween. You don’t want to be messing with the offcut timber supply chain around where I live.
Ostentatious pallet-gathering attracts the attention of both the cops and the robbers. But that dies down after a while.
Yes, by rights a stove isn’t the environmentally friendliest. But it’s either that or burn more gas.
It doesn’t take much to heat this little house anyway and the insulation is good.
Apart from asking permission, there is a certain etiquette that needs to be understood with taking timber from skips.
You need to very obviously ring the bell again when you arrive with the car.
Neighbours might think you’re up to something. Which you are.
Don’t be taking any supporting timbers. The main rule of hiring a skip is 'we didn’t get a big enough skip'.
So people often increase the side with some structural timber. You can’t take that. To misquote Michael Caine: 'I didn’t ask you to take the bloody doors off.' The rest of the rubble will be out on the ground.
Once home, the look on my face leads my wife to call me 'The most pleased man in Ireland'.
You can’t underestimate the power of free stuff, especially free fuel, and especially free fuel that would have been thrown out.
I light the stove, but not all day. This has to last us.
Who knows when the next opportunity arises. But when it does, I’ll be ready to leg it for skip day.
