Anyway, later on I rang the council and explained that I was now sans bin bag. "Well, we don't send them out any more," said the lady on the phone.
"So how do I go about getting an new one?" I enquired.
"Well, you can come to the council offices for one," she said (An extra journey into town - I don't think so.) "or you can ask the binmen for another one next week." (Our binmen have all the charm and social interaction of a black bear with toothache.)
"That would mean I would have no recycling bag for a week," I pointed out.
"Oh, you can use ordinary carrier bags for now," came the reply. (That would be the bags that we don't get in shops any more in Wales unless we pay for them.)
By this time, I was bored with the conversation and brought it speedily to an end, deciding to look out for the binmen this morning on my walk with Paddy.
As luck would have it, I spotted the bin wagon parked in a road nearby and right by it was a white van, seemingly a council van, with a man in a high viz jacket standing by it. I asked him if he had a spare blue bag and explained my conversation with the council lady the day before. He looked slightly mystified but disappeared up the drive of an adjacent house muttering that he was sure he had one somewhere.
"You do work on the bins?" I said when he came back.
"Oh no, I just live here," he said, "but I do collect any green bins and bin bags I see abandoned," and he handed me a much used but serviceable blue bag.
When I had made my apologies and crawled off up the road, I turned into the new housing estate and, hey presto, there was a pristine blue bag which had blown from somewhere onto the grass. As it was nowhere near any of the houses, I decided to liberate it forthwith.