Skip divers

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I was going to bed when I was attracted to the front window by some noise in the street. Peering down I could discern a light buried somewhere in the skip outside a nearby house and a pair of wiggling lower legs sticking over the edge. Up the road I could hear calls from a group of men calling their friend to get out the skip and come on, there calls receeding into the distance as they continued walking.

I focused on the skip and soon a whole body appeared with a hand clutching a book. He turned his torch on the book, nodded, placed it carefully on the edge of a mattress and tipped himself back in, bobbing in and out like those ornamental birds you used to get which dipped their beak in and out the water. Eventually the bobbing slowed and his feet tipped to such an angle I thought he was going in. Then with a couple of mighty leg flicks he re-emerged clutching the object of his efforts, a skateboard and a vintage looking one at that. It had a narrow deck, shaped like a missile and big wide wheels, wider than the deck, the kind you used to get in the 70's. I was immediately jealous and wished I'd looked in there earlier.

He put it down with the obvious intention of scooting off on it and it became clear at that point by his vague wavy upper body that he was a couple of sheets to the wind. I noticed also that his torch was in fact a phone with the flash acting as a beam. The phone screen lit up his face as he held it forward pointing in his intended direction. I feared the worst as with a concentrated inward look, he clearly tried to remember what to do. He gave an almighty shove, unfortunately with the wrong foot and the skateboard shot backwards at high speed and disappeared under a car, whilst he stumbled forward but amazingly didn't fall. Undeterred, I saw him wiggle under the car with some dexterity and retrieve it. The fact that he could have gone to the other side to get it, seemed to elude him. He placed himself back on it, concentrated, paused, then got back off and swopped feet. This time, he got it right and he wobbled off, veering from left to right holding his phone in front of him like a wee will o' the wisp.

All in all it was pretty amusing.
 

Night Train

Maker of Things
Technically, without the authorisation of the skip company or the person who hired the skip, it would be theft. I will look and then ask permission to skip dive but I do sometimes find some good stuff.

I personally don't mind people diving in my skip if they see something they want, it is those who leave their stuff in it that narks me.

Skip diving is good recycling.
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Technically, without the authorisation of the skip company or the person who hired the skip, it would be theft. I will look and then ask permission to skip dive but I do sometimes find some good stuff.

I personally don't mind people diving in my skip if they see something they want, it is those who leave their stuff in it that narks me.

Skip diving is good recycling.


Indeed it is, and a bit like treasure hunting.

I get to skip dive all day at work, in a small way. Mostly we only get the stuff we should, recyclables, but we also garner a few books that are worth putting in the charity box (or sometimes, reading first, but mostly period romance and bad thrillers) and the odd nice decorative bottle (the best was the model of the Eiffel Tower that had once held absinthe), and once, an entire 'antique globe' drinks cabinet.

An alternative type of skip diving is the humorous slide down the slope when the paper or card skips are at a certain stage of full and we're still filling them from the back doors. Sometimes, I climb all the way up with a boxload, and then just as I go to upturn it, slither all the way back down, like the trees in The Railway Children.
 
OP
OP
C

Crackle

..
What's amazing is the constant stream of people looking in the skip. I had a skip recently and both the old doors I put in went and the old loft tanks. The one that's down the road is a house clearout, so there's allsorts going in but as fast as it's going in, it's coming out. A white van pulls up every now and again and someone gets out, has a route (or is it root?) and takes something out.
 

phil_hg_uk

I am not a member, I am a free man !!!!!!
I remember when I was having my water tank replaced I had too lock the old immersion heater and cold water tank in the shed until I could get to the scrap metal merchants, to stop those scrap men you see driving around in the white flat bed vans from liberating them :laugh:

I have noticed in the last year that the number of these people driving around looking for scrap has gone through the roof.
 

Speicher

Vice Admiral
Moderator
A few years back, some building work was done on this house. There was a skip on the driveway, but I insisted that only I put things in the skip. The stuff the builders wanted to throw out was unbelievable!

The old copper hot water tank and the piping went to someone who was building a Ground Source Waste Heat pump system.

Cardboard of various sizes went to playgroups (to make a Wendy House), immense sheets of bubble wrap went to someone to insulate their green house. Small cardboard pieces went to the second hand book shop for them to post books in.

A window went to someone building a shed. The garage door to someone two doors down the street, and they gave me a lovely bookcase and cabinet that they no longer needed.

That is just the big items, never mind 200 plastic garden pots (don't ask), an old wheelbarrow, and more Jiffy envelopes than I care to recall.

Admittedly it took time, and Freecycle to arrange these new homes for things, but they were definitely re-usable.
 

Speicher

Vice Admiral
Moderator
I remember when I was having my water tank replaced I had too lock the old immersion heater and cold water tank in the shed until I could get to the scrap metal merchants, to stop those scrap men you see driving around in the white flat bed vans from liberating them :laugh:

I have noticed in the last year that the number of these people driving around looking for scrap has gone through the roof.

Always providing it is not a metal roof, or one with lead flashing.

:hello:
 
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