Fly-tipping

Hello all readers! This time Anne Giles was the only one to comment. Thank you for being such a faithful reader. First, Anne, I must answer your query. I was stupid to say that the Surrey Fish co. is on George Street. After North End, where the road and the tram line to Wimbledon go down steeply it changes its name to Church Street. The shop is about the third on the left hand side, after the entrance to the market.

I had intended to write this once a week but last week my difficult relationship with my computer broke down and I ended up taking the hard copy down to the Advertiser on the bus! It missed the deadline anyway and got delayed.

Now, again, I have to change my plans to talk about an article in the Advertiser.

I so much sympathise with the residents of Strathmore Road where a lot of fly-tipping takes place. What the Council could do would be to stop charging for vans to take stuff to the regular dump. Surely this would be cheaper in the long run than having to pick up the results of fly-tipping?

We experienced the same thing on a mini scale when we first came here, but it was on a very small scale and the solution doesn't apply to something as large as the one in Strathmore Road. However, I think it's a bit relevant.

Around the corner from my house, on a quiet road, there are 4 garages set back from the road and the space there seems to invite everybody to leave unwanted objects and to throw their take-away remains. When I first came to live here the Council said they could not collect from private land but that if I would put it all into bags and put out in the road they would collect. There were 12 big bags and they did just that, very promptly. Ever since, I have seen to it that not much accumulates. If I keep it clean it stays clean, but the moment there is some rubbish, some more is added. Sometimes there are big objects, and I drag them into the road and call the Council and they usually come next morning. I hope and believe that throwing rubbish down will become as frowned-upon as is smoking in public places, and people will feel embarrassed to do it. Remembering the fug on the top of the bus, who would have believed that it could be stopped, with the cooperation of the public?

There used to be three walls around here, completely covered with graffiti. One day, a man called Paul, who lived opposite a long, black railway wall, said he'd have to see it cleaned or move away He agreed with the Council that he would find some people to cooperate and that, if they'd steam-clean it once, we'd undertake to paint over what appeared straight away. So they provided three or four of us with pots of paint and we really have solved the problem. In our little area the graffiti just don't appear any more.

The most challenging bit was a tunnel underneath the railway. I used to amuse myself by observing the reactions of the public. Most people walked by, embarrassed, as though I were doing something shameful, not even responding to my "Good morning". More answered, but scurried on. Some told me I was wasting my time. I asked them to remember how much worse it used to be. Some said "That's the Council's job" and my answer to that was that it had to be done very soon after it appeared and we wouldn't want to pay a level of tax to allow them to do that. Some asked me if I was paid to do that. I said "no". One woman said, "Well, I suppose it gives you something...." but she didn't quite like to finish her sentence by saying "to do", when she saw the expression on my face. Just a very few said "Thank you" and one young man said it was a public-spirited thing to do. The most amusing one was when I was doing the entrance to the tunnel

and a woman stopped her car, backed it up and shouted, "I'm going to call the police".

I said, "It's no good doing that, the best thing is to just paint it over". "Oh," she said, "painting it over, I thought you were putting it up". I said, "Do I look like the kind of person who does graffiti?" and she answered, "You never can tell these days!" and she drove off, without apology.

I have a lovely photo of my 3-year-old grandson doing his bit of graffiti removal. Unfortunately I have absolutely no idea how to put it on here!

Good luck Joyce and David, Tracy and Lisa. Just keep campaigning. Can you get the licence numbers of the vans? After all, they are doing something illegal