Saturday, 7 January 2017

Bottles, binning, bellisimo

We were all up, breakfasted and dressed rather early for a Saturday morning today, due to the fact we were helping with the bottle drive for the Grade Eight's Graduation Trip fundraising. We met at 10am at the local co-op/Beer Store where four drivers were sent out with various Grade 8 kids to collect the Hamlets empty wine and beer bottles. This is a well known thing over here so they expect it and most collect them and put their bottles out ready for collection. Some people wait for the kids to knock on their door and some just don't take part. All bottles get money back over here so it's nice the community give their bottles (especially after Christmas and New Year) towards the fundraising. Their trip costs around $800 so whatever is raised is always useful.

A group of us stayed at the co-op in order to sort the bottles. Moo and I and Huffle and Smallest, one of the mums and her daughter and the organiser (another mum). We just got ourselves organised when a truck load came and we had to empty it and sort it and then another two came and it became a mess and pandemonium. Once again, we just got organised when three trucks came back full of bottles and we had to unload and sort again. Each wine bottle had to be split into clear or coloured and counted in twelves. Each beer bottle had to be organised in sizes and colour and boxed in 24's. All pop and alcopops also were sorted into 24's. It sounds easier than it was but there were SO MANY!

Huffle, Moo and Smallest went off to football where they found out that our Coach and the Assistant Coach had been sacked that very minute by CoachOl (DHead) and although Huffle managed to remove Smallest off the pitch, the other parents were cautioned against doing this. The kids were told nothing though obviously they had a different coach who they didn't know and also didn't know what their positions were. But that doesn't matter I suppose when you make the players play 'player centric roles'. The only good thing about this is that it made Smallest score a goal, although saying that, he scored it whilst being in a defensive potion which his normal position. Afterwards there was a meeting in the outside corridor where CoachOlDHead told them he had made the decision to fire the coaches by himself and then the parents fired questions at him that he couldn't answer. All of this discussion was filmed by our Coach's wife. No-one was happy. Everyone was shocked. We are all being called to a meeting in the near future. Can't wait! Much later we had a call from our Coach and it looks like everyone is now wanting to take the kids away from the club and take them elsewhere. CoachOlDHead called the assistant coach, just after our coach called him to let him know he was fired (he's on holiday right now) and asked him if he was ready to be Head Coach. How ridiculous (he declined) they are willing to put in a coach who knows NOTHING (no offence) about football whatsoever!!! I think that club just want nice playing, not winning, not proper footy, just niceness! Idiots!

Meanwhile back at the Co-op, we worked like troopers. Small had been out knocking on people's doors and collecting bottles for hours before coming back and helping us to sort. Moo and Huffle came back and Huffle let Small go home for a while to get warm and have some food before both Smallest and Small came back to finish off. We ended up raising over $1,500 and we think we collected 1,800 wine bottles. 3,000 Cans. 2,700 beer bottles plus various other bottles that didn't really fit into a category. We worked for 5.5 hours without stopping. It was back breaking, cold and very tiring. I wonder if it's really worth all the effort but I guess it's something. The only thing is the money goes to all Grade 8 students whether they helped or not. Not really fair but what can you do?

Huffle took us out for a lovely Italian in our most favourite place. We had a very delicious dinner and came home for a long rest.

Wow look at that sky!

 

 

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