Entry #14: Searching Through Dumpsters.

This is kind of a funny story that seemed like a miracle to us when it happened. It happened quite a while ago, and I've been meaning to write about it for quite some time now. Remember back when the World Cup of Rugby was on? Oh right, nevermind...since you're all happily sitting way on the other side of the ocean I'm sure that you weren't bombarded with the constant reminders of its existence as we were over here in England. It was kind of a big deal over here, actually make that a very large deal, especially when the England squad started doing well and made it all the way to the final game.
At the last minute Dave and I walked over to one of the many bars along Broad Street for the semi-final game against France. It was after we had spent the day in Stratford-upon-Avon, and we stood among the many others in the Irish pub and watched as England won the game. "Au revoir, mes amis!" the DJ yelled as everyone simultaneously burst into a rousing rendition of "sweet chariot". The next weekend we made plans to catch the game with another teacher friend and her roommates. We were all set to go and meet her until we started looking for our IDs.
There is this stupid thing here called Council Tax. It is like a property tax on a house, except everybody has to pay it, even if they're like us and are renting an apartment. And it is quite a hefty sum as well. So when we got our first bill we noticed a section that alluded to the possibility of getting a discount if you were poor enough. Being quite poor ourselves, we did some further investigating.
After filling out a twenty page form, we were ready to claim our rebate. Dave had to walk it, along with every piece of identification, marriage certificate, and lease agreement in our possession, to the office, which was ridiculously far away. Apparently they thought it would be a good idea not to have an office in, you know, the downtown area of the city. After a walk into the suburbs, Dave returned, telling me that they wouldn't accept the forms because the address of our letting agent on our contract for the apartment was no longer current.
Anyway, back to the rugby night...we couldn't find our IDs. Where were they last? In the envelope along with every other official document we owned that Dave had taken to the Council tax office. Where was the envelope? We couldn't find it anywhere. I knew right away where it must be. That afternoon we had walked over to the TESCO, which has the closest recycling facilities to our apartment, and dumped a load of paper and cardboard into the bins. It was an awful realization.
We took our passports to the pub, which miraculously we still had, and watched as England lost to the South African team. Everyone was heading over to another place that did cheap drinks, but we declined. When they asked why, we told them that we were going to search through a dumpster. They looked at us with wide eyes, laughed a little bit, then realized we were serious and wished us luck.
The dumpsters are on a back street that isn't very well lit, and there are about ten of them in a row. We had no idea which one we had dumped our stuff into earlier that afternoon. So we started randomly pulling stuff out onto the sidewalk. We were at it for a good fifteen minutes, no closer to finding anything, when we saw some lights flashing. A police car pulled over beside us and he rolled down his window.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" He said to us, in a no-nonsense kind of way. We walked over and tried to explain that our whole lives were somewhere in one of the dumpsters. I think as soon as he realized that we weren't drunk, we were in the clear. "I think you'll be very lucky to find anything" he said and drove off, so we continued our search.
Shortly after that I found an item that belonged to us - a Tropicana carton! We got excited - we had found something at least! We were on the right path. It wasn't long after that Dave started pulling out some of our newspapers and finally our envelope containing all of our precious information. We started cheering, quite loudly, actually wishing there was someone else on that street to share the good news with. I sent a text to Mel. Dave made me promise to never tell his mother what had happened, how we had almost thrown away various forms of identification and contracts into the garbage.
...but I guess she was going to find out one way or another, right?