THE GOOD AND THE VILE

Pride and an­guish, de­ter­mi­na­tion and de­spair.

The peo­ple of our vil­lage sweated under a cloud­less sky clean­ing up the mess, the dire human de­tri­tus, left by mind­less arses. It was a typ­i­cal rural com­mu­nity com­ing to­gether to counter one of the worst and most up­set­ting fail­ings of the self­ish.

Who in their right mind thinks it is al­right to wind down a car win­dow and lob out rub­bish? If you do that you are far be­yond stu­pid. And while I am at it, why bring your rub­bish to a col­lec­tion cen­tre and then leave it for some­one else to sort out or put into ap­pro­pri­ate con­tain­ers? You need sham­ing. I have raised this topic once be­fore, years ago now. But it clearly needs more vol­ume, more hu­mil­i­a­tion heaped on the cretins. Allow me.

I could not get out of my car fast enough to con­front the French­man at the mo­tor­way ser­vices just south of Barcelona who opened his door and shov­elled out masses of waste on to the tar­mac be­fore roar­ing off. I gave him every hand sig­nal I could muster but he didn’t look the type who would ever look in his rear view mir­ror to see the dam­age he must al­ways leave in his wake. Idiot stu­pide.

We can be a vile, un­think­ing species. We have the in­tel­li­gence and the damn­ing proof that we are trash­ing our planet, yet a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of peo­ple still – STILL - don’t give a rat’s arse to the point they will poi­son their own en­vi­ron­ment with­out a sec­ond thought. De­mented. Crim­i­nal.

The good women and men of Marçà loaded the vil­lage pick-up with sacks of de­bris col­lected over sev­eral hours from the verges on the by­pass and in the sur­round­ing area. It was a clean-up prior to the vil­lage crafts fair. There was so much lit­ter the ve­hi­cle dou­bled in height.

The local coun­cil is work­ing to make re­cy­cling far eas­ier, with al­most daily col­lec­tions from colour-coded bins, as are other com­mu­ni­ties. They, nat­u­rally, want change, to some­how flick a switch of re­spon­si­bil­ity within the com­mu­nity, but the issue is more about those who breeze past and lob.

For ex­am­ple: it ir­ri­tates us and our lovely wine mak­ing neigh­bours, also a busi­ness ad­dress, that they keep com­ing and dig­ging holes on our farms to work on the in­ter­net cable feed to the next vil­lage: You know, the su­per­fast fibre optic whizz-bang ser­vice. But, of course, while it runs across our fields and they never ask per­mis­sion for ac­cess or to leave their mark, nei­ther we nor our neigh­bours can have the ser­vice. They will not con­nect us. But what is far far worse is the de­bris. Plas­tic pack­ag­ing, drink tins, bits of dis­carded tape, an as­ton­ish­ing amount that the work­men lay­ing a new cable don’t think twice about leav­ing. Nat­u­rally, I chal­lenged one of them. Sorry he said. Later the rub­bish I handed to him was lying at the bot­tom of a hole wait­ing to be filled.

The time is long over­due to name, shame and pros­e­cute per­pe­tra­tors, and if it takes street cam­eras and dash cam footage to do it, so be it.