I was lucky enough to be reunited with three old friends this week. We went to college together and it has been many years since we all got together for a day or two. We travelled by planes and trains to meet up in Edinburgh and the biting wind accompanied by icy showers couldn’t stop our fun, though it did ruin our hair! My souvenir of this trip is a new brolly from Jenners, the lovely traditional department store in the city. But, I digress. I must tell you about the pink bucket.

Over dinner and a glass of wine, the conversation flowed and eventually turned to recycling and waste. Yes, really! It then moved to dog waste in particular and its poor recyclability. Yes, really!

That is when one of the party owned up to having scooped her pup’s poops into a pink bucket that was hidden at the bottom of the garden. Her problem was that the bucket was full to the brim and she knew that dog waste was toxic to gardens so she didn’t know what to do with it.
A dilemma indeed! The pink bucket was just lingering at the bottom of the garden and she wasn’t sure what would be going on under its lid.
‘ How long has it been there?’
‘Since the dog was a pup.’
‘How old is the dog.’
‘ 12’
‘ 12 months?’
‘ 12 years’
‘Right!’
Gales of laughter. So it wasn’t a new problem.

‘It has been a worry because what can I do with it now?’ She asked.

Well, we all had several suggestions for removing the toxic waste. The most popular solution was to deliver it to The Tate Modern as an exhibit. BUT, we still hadn’t solved how to move the toxic bucket.

What this got me thinking about was how we all have ‘ pink bucket’ syndrome at some time. We have problems that have lurked around us for ages without being dealt with. Niggles that we haven’t got round to sorting out. They may be mental or physical but they are there in the background. They may be solvable or they may not but sharing with a friend or three and thinking about ways forward makes them less forbidding and can even show us the humorous side of a dilemma.

Any bids for the pink bucket will be discreetly passed on.