14 DAY TRIAL // An 8-year-old boy from Great Paxton Cambridgeshire has a really weird passion – he is obsessed with rubbish and bin lorries.
One day, when William Bateman was five, his mother left her eBay account open, so the boy hopped onto the computer and bought a real-life bin lorry for £3,500 ($5,830/€4,250) on her credit card. When left unattended, the youngster didn’t hesitate to enter the bid for a rusting white truck and even managed to win it.
Luckily, mother Fleur managed to persuade eBay to discard the purchase.
“He’s just completely obsessed with rubbish and bin lorries - and he even managed to buy one for himself. I had to beg them to retract my bid when I was congratulated on my win on the site,” said Fleur, cited by Daily Mail.
“I can laugh about it now but at the time I was so shocked and angry, I couldn’t believe he’d done it,” she added.
The school boy, who suffers from mild autism, is fascinated by rubbish and has a large collection of toy wheelie bins, high-vis jackets, miniature lorries and packaging. He dreams of becoming a recycling plant manager.
William is so captivated by this career that he eagerly awaits the bin men every week to see them in action. He even tries to educate his parents’ friends about recycling and if they are not doing it right, the boy firmly admonishes them.
“When he was younger the only way we got him to learn to count was by cutting out pictures of bin trucks and helping him count them. He always asks people, even strangers, about when their binmen come and if they are recycling,” said his mother.
Fleur, 35 and her husband Paul, 45, spent months searching for a children’s book about a binman because William didn’t want to read about anything else.
The woman ended up inventing her own stories and has now compiled a childrens’ book called “Burt the Binman” which includes all of them. The main character of the book is Burt, who helps save the day along with his four multi-colored lorry friends.
William also helped her mother pick the names and places while writing the book.
The boy also gets creative with litter, and creates different things using rubbish. His mother mentions that one Christmas, he made an entire castle and fort out of cardboard.
The boy himself stated, “I think it’s really important to recycle and put rubbish in the bin. I love all my bins and I know lots about it.”