I just broke into every garden on our street

[LaurieFairyCake]

Climbing over gates and everything. In my pyjamas and dressing gown with a torch in London. At 10.30 at night.

tell me why I did this (I’m not Batman or a burglar)

Round here the yoofs drag them away and set fire to them in the park. You might need back up.

Dear Mumsnet,

There is a lunatic who keeps entering my yard at night and removing my wheelie bin. AIBU to fill it with pig excrement?

Is there any chance that you/DH put your bin away and then forgot? Like when you look for your glasses and they're on the top of your head? Or you look for your phone and it's in your hand?

I do get the menopausal stuff. I wanted to murder two people in work today and had to take breath!

Is it a wheelie bin or a normal black bin? obviously wheelie bins are higher value.

Mine had our house number painted on umpteen areas of the bin when 'the policewoman' stole it.

She also used to fly tip in our back garden. I'll not outline it all here - would take too long.

It stopped the day that I returned a heap of paper rubbish (including the cardboard box she'd put it in) to her front doorstep.

I'm not saying that 'the policewoman' is spectacularly stupid, but said box had her name and address on it and a logo for a company called something like 'Exotic Nights'.

Of course, I'm a mature woman...a secondary HoD at the time. I couldn't put anything on social media - given my maturity level and membership of the General Teaching Council for Scotland... so I inadvertently mentioned it to two of the biggest gossips in our street. Problem solved.

I wish we’d forgot we had it! Nope, it goes in our alleyway and it was DH who went out to get the bin and came in and told me it had been half inched

Genius!

It’s a wheelie black bin

You can also order bin labels with your number and street from Amazon.

To be fair, it's dark by 4pm at the moment!

I hope you manage to find the bin, such a pain especially on a week you're trying to clear stuff out.

That ‘policewoman’ is a total arsehole. Chuck her rubbish back over.

I'm 65.

My young friend - take my advice: embrace the menopausal rage and anger surge...Let it all out...

I once screamed when I discovered that someone had filled our plastics bin with bottles and cans. I had spent years being quite demure, but I vaguely recall yelling something along the lines of "OH NO! A cannae be daein wi this! Ma mum's goat dementia...Ma man's in hospital wi a stroke...and noo this! A cannae take ony mair!"

I had been staying over at my mother's whilst DH was in hospital. A passing neighbour - whom I didn't even know since they lived down the bottom end of the street - helpfully pointed out the party house.

I vaguely recall removing the bags of bottles and cans and dumping them on the culprits' doorstep.

Menopausal rage. Your midlife friend. [ETA Yes, the above incident happened a while pack. I'm now a post-menopausal, ill-tempered crone.]

I did, I'm happy to say.

I’m disappointed. I was hoping you were going to say it was for a dare.

I now have a mental image of the OP clad entirely in black, masked and jumping skilfully over back fences.

Pink pyjamas, blue wellies and a blue woollen dressing gown 😂

As my former pupils would have said: "Legend!"

I'm really sorry that your bin has gone, @OP, but this thread has made my night.

I had a similar , if peri, rage just after lockdown started. My desk for wfh is in the front room, near the window. The bin is outside. A car pulled up, and a man started clearing his car of takeaway boxes and shoving them in my bin. The front door is in the same room so I opened it and gave him merry hell from my doorstep. He sheepishly took them out of the bin and put them back in his car and drove away. I think he thought I was quite mad, but I cared not one jot.

Excellent!

Your DH refused to go because he at least has some dignity. Just phone the council like a normal person would and don't feel entitled to trespass into everyone else's gardens. I would have been furious if I was your neighbour.

I think he was particularly discombobulated by the fact that I was smartly dressed from the waist up, but in pj bottoms and slippers (yay teams meetings) and according to DP, the crosser I get the more I sound like the late queen.

Despite painting the address on, big sticky labels etc. my daughter's bins kept getting nicked (and those of others in the street). She melted her address deeply into the plastic with a soldering iron which has worked so far.

With a box of Milk Tray under her arm.