I try to keep calm, I really do. That’s why I go to parks with the dog – to see grass, trees and loveliness. But what do I find there? A sea of filth.
Every sort of muck: cans, bottles, fag ends, wet wipes, plastic, rotting snacks, tissues, and mountains of dog shit. My sunny mood is soon shot to hell. And the better the weather, the more the crap. The poor park keeper goes on his rounds with his sacks, picking up everything the slobs have dropped all over the lawns and in drifts against the football pitch fence – where the sports people like to drop their cans and bottles, and the parents, watching their kiddies, drop their paper coffee cups, training up the next generation of litterers.
Perhaps the slobbos like to have servants cleaning up after them, to make them feel grand. Perhaps they just want to annoy. And it works.
The 25% of people who drop litter enrage the rest of us, because there’s nothing much we can do. We try. My neighbour told a boy to pick up his crisp packet and put it in the bin. He did so. Along came his mother who made him take it out again. It is not always wise to challenge such a mother. I did once, and I nearly got a smack around the chops. Fielding only dares to reprimand small litterers. “I’ve had verbals and physicals,” says he. “I’m getting too old for all that.”
It’s bad for our mental health to be surrounded by filth. I wade through it, watch the snackers and picnickers scattering it about, feel my blood pressure rising, and wish I was a huge fellow with bulging muscles and martial-arts skills so that I could order the stinkers to pick up their rubbish. But I can’t. I must just pick it up myself to shame them. But they are not ashamed. This is now one of the dirtiest countries in Europe and it’s getting dirtier. What is going on? What is happening to us?
I’m trying to find a silver lining here, but I can’t. Only a plastic one.
