What to do with the “Hiya” and the recycling

Living in the UK for a total of 72 hours now, has left me with two major problems. What to do with the “Hiya” and how to understand the recycling.   I will get to the “Hiya” later as it is my major concern. If I recycle properly I may only save the planet, whereas if I can understand the “Hiya” properly, I could make a new best friend.  

So wanting to be good citizens, and not to be kicked off this island for interfering with national health and safety, Herman and I looked at the council website.  (We do have neighbours, but with the internet you don’t need to talk to them anymore. Which is a pity because it limits access to new best friends.  Now, instead of being able to knock on their door and ask “Could you give me an idea of how the recycling works here?” and then getting invited in for a cup of tea and the beginning of a lifelong friendship, one resorts to looking at your own computer screen, which is something you were doing in Joburg anyway).

I am sure that with time and with a lot of practise, I will know how to recycle.  But right now, I fear “it’s going to be the death of me”. This is what I understood from looking at the website:  there are three bins – a black one, a green one and another coloured one.  (I look out the window and verify that we have three bins in our garden, they are all silver – but I can work with this. It just means I must imagine they are coloured. I can do that).  Then somewhere along the line there is also a pink bag that does something in one of these coloured bins.  And then all you have to do is separate out plastic and glass (but not paper or tins?), and general household waste (but not garden waste, garden waste goes into another bin).  Then it seems that the general household waste is collected on a weekly basis (which is what I am used to, and I can do this) but not the other things.  The other things have their special collection date, which is not weekly.  It is rather every alternate Tuesday for one bin, then every other Thursday for the other bin.  I think it is also possible that the they said something about this all changing depending on which side of the equinox you find yourself.  

So what I gather is that I have to hold on to a lot of recycling for a long time.  And what worries me about this is that our new house is so small, that if I have to hold on to the recycling for just one week, our tiny house will be full …. And not just that, I can see what is going to happen on national news if this goes wrong, “I am standing here today in front of a cottage in Lincolnshire.  The nation has been rocked by the death of an entire family, due to recycling. The Holtzhausen’s obeyed all the laws, but whereas the washer woman who lived in their 1706 cottage in the 18th century died of tuberculosis, the Holtzhausens who occupied it in 2019 all died of Listeriosis. It is suspected that the Listeriosis grew in the yoghurt cartons that they stored under the stairs while waiting for the summer solstice to occur before they could put them in a pink bag which would then go into a black bin for recycling. It took weeks to find the dead family, as with the internet being so helpful the family had not yet made contact with the neighbours, so no body even knew that they were living there”. 

But as I say, that problem is nothing compared to what to do with the “Hiya”. If you walk down the street in our new town you get “Hiya-ed” at every corner. On Wednesday of this week, I thought this was good news. I had hoped that “Hiya” was the beginning of a conversation, (and maybe a lifelong friendship). So I answered my first “Hiya’s” as politely as I could. I stopped, looked the Hiya-er in the eye, and answered solemnly,  “I am fine, thank you very much for asking, and how are you doing today?” I stopped myself from adding, “Can you help me understand recycling?” as I didn’t want to dive in too deep and get personal. But I gathered from the look of alarm I got for my “fine thank you very much for asking and how are you doing today?”,  that even that was diving in too deep.  My response was met with a blank stare of confusion and terror. “What does she want? To engage?” 

I know that one day I may feel integrated enough to reply “Hiya” to a “Hiya”, but right now if I did a “Hiya” back, not only would my children probably attack me with “Mom! Don’t say that! They will think you are mocking them! They can hear you aren’t British!” but I would also have a part of me that would would look at the other part of me that was Hiya-ing and the one part would feel embarrassed on behalf of the other part. It would be like calling myself Cathy instead of Catherine. It is simply just not what we do in our family.  

Then yesterday my confusion cleared up. I was walking past the baker who was baking his bread around the corner from our poor widow’s cottage (but in his bakery, not in the street itself).  He threw me a “Hiya” to which I unconsciously replied in “South African”.  And I realised then that I have been expecting way too much of the “Hiya” and the “Hiya” giver.  The “Hiya” doesn’t mean “How are you?”, as in “I want an answer”. It is not the British version of Namaste requesting that our inner gods see each other and that the connection could be the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

The “Hiya” is simply a “Howzit.” And it needs only to be answered by a “Howzit.” 

I mean a “Hiya”.