The greatest gift is our own eyes, sense of smell, and abilities to deduce - Patricia Cornwell

I was dreading going home after our holiday, because I knew the house would be a mess, it was, but it was not as bad as it was last year. We had a nice surprise because my daughter had painted the bathroom and it looks very nice. When we opened the front door we were met by a very unpleasant smell and my first hour or so at home was taken up with trying to track it down. It wasn't animal related and it wasn't the bin, amazingly the bin bag in the kitchen was almost empty. I tracked the pong to the kitchen but I couldn't identify it, I checked for rotting vegetables, but there were none, I had a good sniff inside the fridge but the smell wasn't coming from there. 

In the end I had to leave it and get on with tidying the kitchen and doing the laundry. Then Robbie made me a cup of tea and I sat down in the lounge to drink it. I could smell an over-ripe banana in the fruit bowl and I took it out to the food recycling caddy and as I lifted the lid, the pong was revealed in all it's glory. The contents of the caddy which had morphed into a green hairy mass, had been there since before our holiday! When I had escorted the stinking mass to the outside food bin and disinfected the food caddy, the inquest began. My son was adamant that it was not on his list - a typically aspie response! My older daughter who has a poor sense of smell claimed not to have noticed it and her sister announced that she doesn't have anything to do with food recycling because it is gross. So, the combined intellect of two university graduates and an A Level student was not sufficient to cope with the 'complexities' of  emptying the food caddy. Next year I will leave the cat in charge!