We couldn't have less in common if we tried. He's a cantankerous old fuddy duddy, and I'm a chirpy 24-year-old. His favourite garment is a gray flat cap and mine is a garish seventies shirt.

And it's not just the age and fashion stakes that we differ in. Come Friday night he likes nothing more than a cup of cocoa and a half- ten bedtime, while by then, I'll usually be heading into town to make a prat of myself on a dancefloor.

Similarly on a Monday morning, while I'm typing away in the office, he'll be standing in a queue at a very different office waiting to collect his pension.

It's safe to say that aside from being the same gender, we're poles apart.

So why then, last Tuesday morning, did I feel like I'd become Victor Meldrew? What made me suddenly feel like I'd turned into the miserable 70-year-old?

Well, it was the bin man.

Now, I know that there has been a lot of noise about the bins recently. Apparently we're more riled about them than we are about bin Laden and, as I stood in the street in my boxer shorts and slippers, I could see why.

The problem started the night before when I realised that my household had produced more rubbish than usual. It wasn't much, but enough to mean it wouldn't fit in the wheelie bin and would have to be bagged and left outside.

Experience has taught me that the refuse collectors are no more likely to dispose of this extra bag, than they are to come into my house and give it a spring clean. So as I heard the cart creep up the road, I dashed half-naked out of the house to make sure they took the bag.

As the binman approached I politely asked him if he'd dispose of this excess refuse, but he refused. Not because he didn't want to, which he probably didn't, but because, apparently, he "wasn't allowed to touch the bags."

I was stunned. This bin man, a bloke employed by the council to collect our trash, wasn't allowed to actually pick up the rubbish. He even told me that if I wanted it to go in the back of the refuse lorry, I'd have to chuck it in there myself. That's like getting on a bus and having to drive half of the route yourself.

What made it even worse was that had I been back in my home town in Worcestershire I wouldn't have been throwing rubbish in the back of a truck before breakfast.

Like the rest of the residents there, I'd have simply bagged my rubbish, dumped it at the end of the drive the night before and by the time I'd finished my cornflakes the next day, it would have been collected.

My colleague tells me it's the same story just over the border in Hampshire.

So why are Bournemouth's refuse collectors so precious? A call to the council informed me that it was partly due to nonsense health and safety reasons, but mainly because it's their policy to charge the bin men only with emptying the wheelie bins and nothing more. Apparently there would be absolutely no going beyond the call of duty.

This did nothing to alleviate my Meldrew mood. In fact as I ended the conversation and hung up the phone, I couldn't stop help it and the words just slipped out of my mouth: "I don't belieeeeeeeeeeeeve it."