Eight bags of rubbish were extracted from the undergrowth alongside the 40 metre path between Dutton Road and Lanesborough Rise this morning. That was just from one side - the other will have to wait a couple of weeks till the next bin round comes.
I'm told that when the estate was built, this was an attractively laid out route, with plantings of ornamental trees. You can still pick out the trees among the brambles
But lift a little of the leafmould, and you get the feeling that there's a permanent plastic skin spreading across the surface of the planet.
Along this path, there's plenty of the kind of rubbish you'd expect to be put out in a wheelie bin, but for some reason it's been neatly bagged up, tied - and hurled deep into the brambles.
Apart from that, there are the inevitable drinks cans and plastic bottles, often still half full. Crisp and snack packets too - with bright designs intended to catch the eye of the supermarket customer, now drawing the eye of anyone walking by the woodland.
A bit more curious are the multicoloured mass of cable insulation, the buggy, and the one ladies stiletto heeled red boot. Someone had a painful journey home!
Not much of all this was degradable - it's more likely to degrade the district.
Ironically, to leave it there would have been 'cost-free' in the economists book. By shifting it to the roadside, to be gathered up by the bin men, taken to the waste transfer station, bailed and containerised, and railed off to be reburied in some Buckinghamshire landfill, a few quid will have been added to the council's waste bills.
And maybe today's economists would welcome that as a much needed stimulus to economic activity.
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There are always stories of all sorts of nefarious antisocial behaviour in this little piece of woodland. The clues in the rubbish show something different. I think there's a secret cabal of treacle addicts who assemble there by night, beyond the gaze of the dieticians. But I can't explain the heap of carrots further down the hillside. A bit back, there were oranges at the same spot - and before that, bread buns. Any ideas?
