IT was last Tuesday. I was on the computer, sorting out finances, whilst keeping half an eye on a webcast of a Wiltshire Council meeting.

I was wondering whether to tell you what I’d just heard cabinet member Jonathon Seed (one of those in the frame to succeed Jane Scott) say to an elderly, inoffensive and slightly flustered lady representing the Campaign to Protect Rural England.

This lady had spoken in favour of proposals that council decisions should be made in the open by cross-party committees, rather than privately by a ruling clique, and that people should be allowed to discuss planning applications at area board meetings.

Cllr Seed’s response? Charities such as the CPRE should not “stray into the political arena”. Otherwise they’d become “washed up” like the RSPCA or like the local groups of political parties that oppose Wiltshire Conservatives.

Impressive, huh?

Another Tory councillor, Chuck Berry, felt moved to apologise for him, saying: “He didn’t really mean it” and: “He just gets a bit like that sometimes”.

Amid such excitement, something slipped my mind.

I was supposed to take a car full of garden rubbish to the tip.

My husband had kindly loaded it before going away overnight.

But when I looked at the clock it was 5.15. Oh no! They shut at four.

This rubbish consisted of the fortnight-old contents of our overflowing green bin, which I’d forgotten to put out the previous Friday, plus three tarpaulins bulging with hedge cuttings, rose prunings, weeds etc. that had, in the intermittent rain of the previous few days, turned into a rotting, foul-smelling, leaking slime.

By the time I got out to the poor old car its windows were all misted up, as if it was crying with the awfulness of what I’d done to it.

But it would have to wait. Thank goodness the next day wasn’t Thursday or I’d have had to take it to Amesbury.

Anyway, there I was feeling stupid, sitting on the sofa after a lonely dinner with the telly on and the dog snoozing beside me, when I heard an alarm outside. I thought my neighbour might have burglars, and went out to check.

But no, it was the car.

Something unidentified, with multiple legs, bulging eyes and waving pincers, must have been crawling around inside and triggered the mechanism. OMG, it could be like the Ugly Bug Ball in there!

What if a spider ran across my arm while I was at the wheel? Or dropped onto my head? Arachnids are wonderful – at a safe distance.

I had no choice but to leave the car unlocked all night for fear of the darn thing going off again and waking the entire road.

“Oh dear,” said my husband, concerned about security when I rang him.

“Well”, I retorted, “if anyone wants to steal a car packed to the roof with rancid, creepy-crawly infested, semiliquidised plant matter, they are extremely welcome.”

And that, as I explained to my Wednesday morning dogwalking pals in a series of WhatsApp messages, was why I wouldn’t be joining them.

After the tip, I’d be having the car valeted, and hang the expense!

anneriddle36@gmail.com