Bonding?

Like all new parents, I want to form a strong father-and-son bond with Harry. However, I think my efforts in this direction have suffered a bit of a knock in recent weeks.

Firstly, I went along to the doctor’s with Harry for his second round of injections. Melissa had taken Harry for his first set a few weeks earlier and he was, by all accounts, pretty upset at the whole experience.

So this time, I went along as well. By the time we’d walked to the surgery, Harry was fast asleep, so you can imagine the nasty shock he got when he woke up to find a smiling nurse jabbing a long needle into the top of his leg. Poor Harry looked heartbroken and, judging by the look in his eyes, he didn’t think much of me for allowing it to happen.

Anyway, I’ve since spent plenty of time trying to rebuild Harry’s trust in me – only to undermine all the good work by taking him swimming.

Things started pretty well. We took Harry to Plas Madoc for the excellent parent and paddler session on a Sunday morning. We bought the necessary inflatable, popped Harry in it and he seemed quite happy bobbing up and down in the water.

Then the wave machine started; Harry was almost instantly submerged by a wave which caught both of us by surprise. Fortunately, Melissa was on hand to pick up the pieces and Harry was soon back to his smiling self – albeit with his trust in me once again thoroughly undermined.

We’re definitely going to persist with the swimming, though, because Harry did seem to enjoy it for the most part. Next time, when the wave machine siren goes, I’ll be a little more careful.

Talking rubbish

I like to think that I'm a fairly reasonable sort of person but, occasionally, things make me really angry.

And this week, bin collections have been making me angry.

Now I'm not going to claim for one minute that I'm the world's most conscientious when it comes to recycling. However, I am doing my best to recycle as much as possible and that includes garden waste.

We've got a fairly big lawn and our two garden waste bins get filled up quite quickly, particularly during the summer months. So you can imagine my delight when I realised that, due to a reorganisation of bin collections across the county, Wrexham Council decided there would be a four week delay in collecting garden waste.

As I write this, both of my green bins are full - and I still have two weeks to wait before they are emptied. My grass needs cutting, and I may have to resort to using the household waste bin.

I can understand that Wrexham Council wanted to reorganise bin collections to cut costs, but surely they could have come up with a better solution than this. Maybe the middle of winter, when nobody is cutting their lawns, would have been more sensible.

To add insult to injury, Chirk has just lost its very popular skip, which was previously available to residents on a Wednesday and Saturday. I know local councillors opposed the move but were told the skip had to go to save money.

Instead, any waste which we cannot fit in our bins will have to be disposed of at Plas Madoc - six or seven miles away - and all those car journeys can't be good for the environment.