Litter Picking - Part 2

Another month, another session of litter picking. If you need reminding as to why I go to Prince's Park on a Saturday morning, deprived of sleep and bereft of joy, this is the reason:

I care about the environment, and I care about the local community. Sure there are scumbags who live round here that are incapable of disposing their disease-ridden syringes and empty cans of beer, but someone's go to clean their mess and I care about them enough to waste my Saturday morning doing it. God will smile at my acts of charity, and hopefully award me bonus points for the afterlife. When parents see me striding purposefully through the mud and rain, picking litter, they'll point to me and say to their young children: "There's a hero, a role model, a saint." Oh yes, it's just one small step on the road to Sainthood.

For the real reason, click here to read the first instalment of litter picking.

So to start off me and Torquer were dropped off at the entrance to Princes Park where we were joined by Rob to complete our trio.

Last time we had simply been handed our equipment and forced into the harsh terrain to fend for ourselves (and collect litter). This time however, we followed a procession of middle-aged people who also claimed to be "friends of the park" but while we had the simple task of picking litter, they had the difficult and infinitely more challenging task of observing architecture.

As we were given our litter-pickers (the poles with the grabbing thing at the end) and big black plastic bag, the organiser shamed us all by announcing to all the "friends of the park" the services we had done and how awesome we were. They all smiled and clapped (one woman even filmed us), we smiled and felt embarrassed.

During our expedition, we discovered two syringes and a beer can with beer that had congealed disgustingly. There was even a tree that had roots which had grown around a piece of pipe; we spent a good ten minutes trying to remove it until we realised that the tree and the pipe had become one.

And only last week, someone had actually died in the park (probably drank too much congealed beer). For all we knew we could have been tampering with key evidence, stuffing it into our big plastic bags never to see the light of day. They only told us this after we had finished.

After being overwhelmed by the fragile beauty of it all, I decided to take this picture (Notice how litter free it is). Had I known there could have been a mass murderer on the loose I would have thought twice.

But there was a dark side to what we were doing, a dark side not shown by the photographic evidence we took. Every act of charity was done to look good in front of the camera; once the cameras were no longer pointing we went back to our selfish, careless ways.

We took a picture of Torquer putting up a bird feeder that had fallen to the ground, but as soon as it had been taken he slung it back in the mud looking for the next photo opportunity. And on one occasion I snapped a young sapling for no apparent reason (after taking a pic of us righting a fallen tree), and trod all over some sprouting daffodils (Torquer dived to protect them).

We were trying to take a picture of me in the process of stepping on the shoots, but Rob preventing me (which would have shown how conscientious were were of the environment). However I inadvertently trod all over them once the picture had been taken.

It was all a sham! The pictures didn't tell the truth of it all! (I would post some of them, but that would compromise my anonymity)

Once we finished, we strode through the fog back to Rob's house (Did I mention it was so foggy I couldn't see my own hands? It was also damn cold as well and Torquer refused to give me his spare gloves. His SPARE gloves! Something about me infecting them...). Had anyone been filming us, it would have looked very impressive; the three of us, striding across the lawn, appearing through the mist and fog, imaginary atmospheric background music playing in the background...

It was at Rob's house that we were re-vitalised with a hot mug of tea and listened to the Liverpool vs Everton match. Later on, I took Torquer to Tesco to enquiry about job opportunities (They took one look at Torquer and said No).

Another month, another litter picking session. I look forward to the next; The time will just fly by.

(Now go over to Torquer's blog and read his account of the events. DO IT!)