On Sunday, I was made to feel like a criminal. On Monday, I was made to feel like a naughty schoolboy. Where do you think I've been? I'll tell you - the "amenity tip" in Shoreham.

After spending most of the weekend digging up the garden, pulling out old bricks, stones and shrubs, I duly filled my car up with black bin-bags full of garden booty and made my way to the tip.

I opened the boot lid of my car and was told by one of the workers that, from Monday, I would be no longer allowed to take bricks and stones to the tip because they were classed as DIY and the tip was never meant to take DIY items.

"Sompting will take them," he said. I told him these were stones I had pulled from the garden. "It doesn't matter, it's still classed as DIY."

He then went on to say the landfill sites would be closed in eight years' time so all the local tips would close too.

What happens then? Do we just throw our garden rubbish into the road? I felt like a criminal - you can't do this, you can't do that.

The next day, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to drive four miles to Sompting to drop off half a dozen rocks and three bricks.

We drove to Shoreham tip, only to be greeted by a security guard in a bright yellow jacket brandishing a clipboard, making notes on what I was about to drop off and looking in the bags to see if I was smuggling DIY contraband into the big bins.

This guy was glaring at people as they pulled in, walking around to the boots of their cars to make sure no one was "breaking the law".

I'd love to see the "official" reason as to why we can't bring DIY rubbish to the tip.

And what do the relevant councils actually consider to be DIY? In my view, DIY is doors, shelving, kitchen units and so on - certainly not stones and bricks pulled from the soil.

-Lancashire Lad