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Alice Thomas Ellis
It was suggested recently that we should all tidy up the street outside our own front steps in order to alleviate the litter prob- lem. The trouble with that is that many people's idea (and I do not exclude myself) of tidying up outside their own front door is to shovel the litter down to the neigh- bour's front door. A few weeks ago the garden was overwhelmed with black bags — I think because the refuse collectors peering round the gate came over all tired at the sight of them, and I do understand — and after a while Janet and I heaved them into the street and piled them round the bole of the lamp post. We would have put them in a nearby skip, but skips are always full, and always more than half full with the detritus of people other than the person who actually hired the skip in the first place. Everybody who has ever hired a skip has suffered from this problem and thus has a vengeful compulsion to put things in other people's skips. Human nature.
The reason we had so many black bags was because we'd been tidying up the house. We have thrown away a great deal but because matter can neither be created nor destroyed many things have merely been redistributed. And because of the laws of entropy many of our possessions have been rendered into dust — most of it reposing on the bookshelves. Since we find it so difficult to keep our own house in order I cannot get too annoyed with the authorities who also seem incapable of keeping things tidy. One Sunday morning ! was astonished to see two people in Day- glo waistcoats apparently busying them- selves in the road sweeping up leaves and dog mess and old chip wrappers with dustpans and brushes. I should have thought that by now technology would have taken over and this method would have been redundant. We don't attempt to clean even the house with a dustpan and brush. We have a vacuum cleaner.
Other countries send large pieces of machinery round the streets collecting up the garbage, and then go round hosing everything down. Perhaps it is impossible here because of the parked cars and the volume of moving traffic. And, of course, the holes in the road. The gas men are still going round ripping up the paving stones, old and new, and digging deep pits. It is very hard to keep things tidy when there are people burrowing everywhere — it also makes an awful lot of mud.
I was giving thanks the other day that it was too cold for bluebottles to come and infest the black bags and lay eggs in them which would turn into hordes of maggots (as happened one strike-struck summer) when I noticed a fly sitting on the kitchen table. I crept up on him and attempted to swat him with a page of manuscript, but he was too quick for me. That was several days ago and he's still around. Just one solitary fly, but enough to shame us when strangers are present and he hovers over the butter dish. I'm determined to get him. If I can't do it by skill and dexterity with a rolled-up newspaper I shall bring down the vacuum cleaner and hoover him. I used up all the fly spray on the plague of wasps we had earlier in the year. And one day when I ran out of fly spray I used up a can of furniture polish. Now I come to think of it it probably made another hole in the ozone layer. I give up.
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