TEACHER Kathy Parr was stunned to discover binmen had picked up and dumped 70 stacked bags of top soil and compost in a collection blunder at her Leigh home.

She watched in amazement as she looked through her kitchen window the other Thursday and saw the last bag vanish into the bin wagon.

The trouble started when she called the council's refuse department to remove 36 bags of garden rubbish from inside her garage.

She regularly pays £20 for the privilege, and points out that if payment is made the cart usually arrives on a Saturday. For some reason the lads turned up on Thursday and shifted £70 worth of the gardening materials, stashed in clear bags next to the garage -- stored for use after builders working on the house had left.

Naturally Kathy was hopping mad, but after the culprits had calmed her down she could see that they were upset.

When she put in a call to the council she was told she should have stipulated the rubbish was in black bin bags!

However, she was delighted when the following day a polite employee from engineering services rang back to apologise and told her the lads responsible had been in to see bosses because they were devastated.

Action which impressed Kathy no end.

Mistakes do happen, and in this case it looks like it could be six of one and half a dozen of the other. It just goes to show that if people are reasonable things can be sorted out amicably. More people should realise that instead of blasting off at a tangent.

Although she didn't find the incident funny at the time, (well who would?), Kathy now looks back and laughs at what she describes as being like a Monty Python sketch.

She is to be compensated -- but it might be a good idea, and save further calamities, if the waste disposal operatives had it in their remit to actually knock on the door in future to check what is to be removed.