Dear Islington Borough Council,
I’m writing today to bring to your attention a fly tip that has recently appeared in an area which concerns me. Being a resident of your borough, and a regular contributor to your council tax fund, I feel it falls well within your responsibility to rectify this problem.
I discovered this tip yesterday, when, having almost arrived home from a long weekend away, I was tired but glad to be (almost) back home. Upon turning into the alleyway down which I reside,my emotions changed to excitement that someone may have brought to fruition my long suppressed idea for a fantastic new range of ‘urban domestic appliances.’ Who hasn’t considered the notion of replacing home washing machines and public launderettes in one fell swoop with a street washing machine? Or replacing the household oven with a hot pavement that the whole community could just sling some meat on?
Unfortunately my hopes and dreams were dashed upon noticing that not only was this magnificent alley fridge that stood before me not plugged in, but also had not been adapted to urban use and was clearly not new. Equally upsetting was the fact that the one other person who clearly did share my vision for outdoor facilities was having a piss right next to my front door, confusing it for some kind of street friendly urinal. It’s actually just a wall, and the fridge is actually just a fridge that some cunt has just dumped there because they couldn’t be fucked to call you people and have you take it away.
So it is with some trepidation that I write to you to ask you to remove this regular, non-urban fridge from the alleyway outside my house. I say ‘with some trepidation’ because it has not escaped my attention the methods you appear to employ when dealing with other fly tipping sites. In my few short months living here, I would estimate I’ve come across no fewer than five fly tips that you appear to have ‘dealt’ with, all along the same road. You’ll notice the word ‘dealt’ in inverted commas there, because as far as I can see, you’ve only ‘dealt’ with them in as far as I’ve ‘dealt’ with world poverty by putting my coppers in the charity pot in at the corner shop.
It’s the tactic you adopt that concerns me, a tactic not dis-similar to that taken by a young boy adding a footballer to his Panini sticker album. By ‘not dis-similar’ I mean completely identical. All you seem to do is put a fucking sticker on it. I’ve seen mattresses, bags of clothes, a sofa and a bed frame all with a big yellow sticker on saying something along the lines of “Don’t fly tip or we’ll fine you £1500.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the term “locking the stable door after the horse has bolted,” but I think it applies quite well in this scenario. I can’t imagine a time when I’ve done something, then found out I shouldn’t have done that and it magically becoming the case that I never actually did it in the first place. In the same way, putting a sticker on some rubbish fails to make that rubbish no longer present. In fact, it manages to make it even more of an eyesore, because your stickers are bright fucking yellow.
Maybe you’re counting on that famous theory that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime, and that they will surely see the notice and realise that they appear to have accidentally left a large item of furniture on the street, and remove or at least leave their details on it so you can apply the relevant fine. Maybe you mean it in a similar way to the pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packets with the warnings ‘SMOKING CUNTS UP YOUR LUNGS’ or ‘SMOKING MAKES YOU FUCK CHILDREN.’ Perhaps it’s your idea that for other people to see the hideous damage they’re doing to our beautiful slice of London they might consider not doing it in future. Which is of course, great, but then you know what would be even better? If you actually removed the fucking rubbish.
I’m sure if someone dumped a fridge on the steps of the town hall you’d have the building evacuated, the senior council members down the golf course and the bomb squad in doing a controlled detonation on the terror-fridge. I’m not asking for it to be treated like an unattended bag at an airport, all I want is for this fridge to be removed, preferably before I’m forced to carry out my own controlled detonation on it by kicking it with my new steel-toe-capped wellies on until I kick a hole in it and probably do the ozone layer some damage with the CFCs that I think might be in it. (It looks pretty old)
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t have a dislike for fridges. I’ve been told as a toddler I once described to my Dad exactly how a fridge works by having him pull our fridge out from under the kitchen work surface and pointing to each relevant part after having once watched a tv show about it. I’m well into fridges, that’s for sure. This isn’t some kind of racial prejudice against white goods. Any colour of kitchen appliance being dumped on my doorstep would illicit a similar response. It’s just that this one particularly riled me up as, for one split second, I really believed someone had installed a fridge in my alleyway rather than just dumping it there. It’s the harsh reality of these crushed hopes and dreams that means I really must demand you come and deal with it PROPERLY as soon as possible, before I try and cram one of my idiot neighbours in it because they are the undoubtedly stupid enough to dump something like that outside their own house, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next recycling collection, there’s a box for a new fridge neatly folded with the rest of their stupid rubbish. Bastards.
You must understand that the main source of my concern stems from safety information I was pedalled as a kid crossed with first hand knowledge of the social evolution of public spaces. We were always warned as youngsters not to play inside fridges incase you get stuck and die, which was never really an issue with me because firstly I was born too tall to fit in a fridge and secondly, I have never harbored a desire to play inside a fridge. However, if a warning is necessary then clearly there is a group of children who enjoy playing in fridges. I am well aware of the long term consquences should this fridge be allowed to develop into a playground. It can only be a matter of weeks between someone putting up a sign along the lines of “this fridge is only suitable for children aged 12 and under” and some scummy 15 year olds tearing it down, pissing on it and proceeding to sit on the shelves of the fridge drinking cheap cider that they threatened an old person into buying for them and having sex with one another in the ice box. I will not allow my alleyway to become a drop off point for the slags in stretch hummers I complained so sincerely about almost a year ago.
Please see that this is dealt with swiftly and stickerlessly.
Yours
Chris
