Costing Culture Shock

I don't know how this'll go down with most of ye. Because I obviously have no idea of what experience any of have had of Scrap Metal. But, suffice it to say that 'Scrap' is a virtual cultural icon amongst Gypsys. It's money. And money to be found laying around all over the place. Discarded by 'normal' people.

Why do ye do that? I've often wondered, throughout my life time. You'll hire a skip, at no small expense to start with. then ye'll start half filling it with what amounts to fucking Cash! It's like ye going through ye own pockets and slinging pounds, shillings and pence into a big tub that's already cost ye a small fortune to hire. Just to have someone take it all away and dump the fucking lot.

And that's how I ~ in my own, small way ~ and many, many more 'Professional' Gypsys and such made a living. By going round, dragging all that shit back out of your skips. Thus we'd actually make more room for ye to dispense with ye rubble and shit. But we'd dig out all the metal ye were chucking out.

We'd then sort it, into various grades and types of metal. Separate and 'Clean' it. (I don't mean dust it and polish it! Just remove any non metal components. Or remove the tin handles from alli' saucepans, eg.) And then we'd take it all down to the Scrap Yard and come away with a big smile and a nice pocket full of cash.

I made my living doing this. I even made huge bonuses, whilst primarily working at some other job. Simply because I have this genetic instinct, born into my very blood, to collect scrap metal.

And now I'm in Eire. And I have a huge, collapsed and derelict outbuilding. And the Biggest fucking skip they can supply. And I'm breaking my back emptying the contents of the one into the other. It's doing my fucking head in! It's doing my head in because probably fifty percent of what I'm dragging out and skipping is Scrap Metal!

FFS! I've just paid over £300 for a fucking skip. Now I'm slinging shit loads of perfectly good scrap in there. And I'll be grateful when I'm done and the man comes to take the lot away. And he'll just dump it in a land fill. No One will come sorting through it. The metal will lay with the old feed sacks and the plastic. This just seems simply and intrinsically Wrong, to me.

But, there it is, ye see? Different country. Different culture. Different economy. You'd be hard pressed to go dig up a sack of peat, for ye garden. Here ye'd be hard pressed to find a Smelting Works. We simply have no industry geared toward the rendering of 'any Old Iron'. Thus no body has any use for it. It's worthless here and not worth enough, over there, for us to ship it across.

So, we bury it. And here's me, shaking my head in despair, as I cart load after load of what I've always seen as money, and slinging it into my own skip, which I've already paid handsomely for. England? This amount of scrap would likely have paid toward the cost of the skip. In Eire? I just hope so much of the shit doesn't take up so much room I'm left needing another damn skip!

That'd just be taking the fucking piss!