There must be someone out there who knows the secret. Do I have to go through some mysterious initiation ceremony to become one of the chosen few?

Is there some password which will allow me to join the lucky ones who claim their reward at the end of a special day? Must I change the colour of the receptacle which I leave out, hoping to catch a roving eye as the mighty vehicles sail past?

Tell me please, someone, what is the secret of getting my dustbin emptied?

I have lived in the same house since 1982 and for many years my bin, a pleasing shade of green, sat happily behind a large shrub just a stride from my front door and was emptied on a regular basis.

The shrub hid it from public view and I could reach it easily even in bad weather.

This happy state of affairs lasted for a good many years, a fact my less generous friends put down to the fact that I was once chairman of the environmental health committee which was responsible for rubbish collection then.

At Christmas I was invited to have breakfast with the crews and I can recall peering over the largest plate of bacon, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread before handing out a token black sack, which the council generously provided to hold the Christmas rubbish. I don't suppose it was always sweetness and light but time has erased any problems and I long for those happy times now.

These days my bin is left unemptied two weeks out of three. I ring the depot more in hope that in expectation and every time get the same battery of questions: "Name?" Your favourite customer again. "Who?" I give my name, followed in short order by my address and life history in answer to further queries. I could almost answer the rest in my sleep. "Is the dustbin visible to the naked eye?" not to mention a clothed binman?

I haven't moved it since 1982 except to make it more visible by bringing it into full view from behind the shrub. This has not made me a favourite with the postman, who has to negotiate the bin to reach my letter box.

We go through various speech patterns while I try to explain that on either side of me there are bins on exactly the same latitude and longitude which do not seem to have any visibility problems and get emptied with beautiful regularity as if they were dosed each week with syrup of figs!

Then there follows a promise of a visit from an operative tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes and I think the saying was invented to give a perfect excuse to our worthy binmen because my "tomorrow" usually turns out to be the next normal collection day and sometimes only if I leave a white flag of surrender in the form of a white garbage bag peeping out of the top of my bin.

There is an added problem in that we have foxes who visit our bins and if there is any food in the bags, they will find it and scatter the rubbish. By keeping my rubbish wrapped up in my bin I am doing the best I can to avoid this but if the price of such action is not to get my bin emptied, I shall be reduced to hurtling my rubbish to the four winds.

I don't know if others in this road have suffered as I have but some of the residents have taken to piling their bags at the base of the nearest lamp post, possibly in desperation, but we do not, as yet, have a kerbside collection. There are a large number of older folk living round this way and they should not have to lug their rubbish bags around.

I shall be trying once again this week to find a friendly dustman who will mount his white charger and take away my rubbish and then come back next week for the next lot. No, not me! Put me down at once! No, not me, it's the white bag not the old bag!