#vicstreetproblems

It is 9.00am. Light slices through the chink in the curtains like a fish knife through a filet de saumon. The rain on the glass panes of the double-glazed windows hammers harder and faster than shotgun fire on the first day of the gaming season. The apocalyptic cacophony of lorry engines, whirring machinery, and breaking glass raging on the street below is doing nothing for your Dom Perignon hangover (was that fifth bottle really necessary?), and, try as you might, you can’t get back to sleep.

Hang on. Lorry engines? That foreboding sound can only mean one thing – bin day. The realisation slowly dawns on you that your collection of rubbish containers are still gathering water in the back garden, right next to the traffic cone-filled Marks and Spencer trolley – the origin of which you’re still not entirely certain.

There is a day when the binmen come. But today is not that day

In spite of your impaired vision and thumping head (why oh WHY did you think challenging Horatio to a Grey Goose bolt-off would be a good idea?!), you leap out of bed and into action, determined to get the bins out on time if it kills you. Pulling on your nearest pair of loafers (to hell with the suede, it’s about time Pop bought you a new pair, anyway) and a Jack Wills hoodie (crimson, even though you’d explicitly told Granny that you wanted cerulean), you stumble down the umpteen flights of stairs to the gin-soaked ground floor.

Your garden, immaculately landscaped on the day of your arrival, can now only be described as a bombsite. How many times will you need to tell Mummy that you can’t get by without a gardener before she actually listens?! With some difficulty, you pick your way through the broken Chippendale chairs, discarded wine cases, and stubbed-out Cubans, and over to the bins.

Trying desperately not to wretch, you set about your task, stopping only to notice the lacrosse ball which has lodged itself into a branch of the sycamore tree. You vaguely remember the impromptu street-lacrosse match held last night (in celebration of Saunders FINALLY stocking Oyster Bay), in which Burley Tirrington-Hewitt’s stick came dangerously close to smashing a window of the BMW 118d. The rutter had better clean up his aim before season starts.

Somehow, with a combination of iron resilience and a cheeky glug from the half-empty bottle of vintage single malt left on the marble worktop, you manage to get the bins onto the garbage-laden street just in time for one of those bizarre, hi-viz clad members of the proletariat to empty them into the filthy vestibule of their lorry.

It is only after you’ve gone back inside that you realise that you’d been storing your secret ‘lash stash’ (worth well over £3000) in one of the bins that you’d just handed to the grubby underling. What on earth are you going to do now? Bertie, Hugo, and Miles will be round in a couple of hours for port and stilton – the traditional aperitif of the weekly timepiece prelash – and you’ve just thrown out all the port. You’d better fire up the BMW and get to M&S sharpish – you can’t let the boys down, and appearances have to be maintained. This is Vic Street, after all.

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, get in touch with us on Twitter, using the hashtag #vicstreetproblems.