Viva Brighton Issue #52 June 2017

240 cm
240 cm
240 cm
COLUMN
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oldmill park
Amy Holtz
EcoHomes For Sale
The truth is, I’m a Minnesotan
Every other week, on a Thursday
evening, I spend six minutes and
twenty-four seconds carrying out
the world’s most mind-melting
task: schlepping the council’s
black recycling bins from the
little alleyway in front of our
block of flats up to the road for
the morning’s collection.
Part of me hates doing it because
it unleashes in me a special kind
of German prissiness, modelled
after that of my great-grandmother, who always
wore an apron and despite her relatively genial
demeanour, spent a lot of time saying ‘Fiddle!’
and ‘Bah!’ at people exhibiting their ineptitudes.
If there was a ‘Bah!’ in the vicinity, someone had
said or done something extremely dumb, and
the resulting shame that welled up inside was
2400mm
of a sort that has yet to rival any of my adult
emotions. But part of me loves doing it because
it gives me the opportunity to tap into this
hand-me-down affectation and use it to sniff,
loudly, in embarrassment at my neighbours for
the ridiculousness of the objects they toss in the
recycling. In our aversion to throwing things
away, they end up, perversely, in these black bins.
Right now, for example, I’m hauling a box full of
magazines, Kleenex boxes, Dolmio and soy sauce
jars (glass box, I mentally note), discarded maths
homework, an empty diaper box and 6,472 halfempty
cans of Tyskie lager. On top, juxtaposed
just for my amusement, are a Boohoo and a
Boden catalogue, both sporting a moody teenager
on their front covers, but with one wearing a
vertical strip of sequins, the other in khakis and
tasteful Breton stripes. I put down the box and
start digging. There’s gotta be something to look
Mill combines the sophistication
rban living with the freedom &
ce of the English Countryside
at in here between sequins and
khaki, because I think that’s the
stage of life I’m at now. And
honestly, I snort loudly, no one
in our building is at the Boohoo
stage of life anymore. It dawns
on me that this also includes
myself; this is its own minitragedy.
But then my hand settles
on something clunky and, I
deduce with my recycling radar,
unrecyclable. “LEGOS? Bah!”
Then, a fingertip later: “Ribbons?” I shout,
incredulous. “Seriously, who the fu...oh, hi,
David.” One elderly neighbour is making his
hourly perambulation down the steps and over
the road to Sainsbury’s. I make sure he’s ok and
on his way before scrabbling further into the
creaking box.
At the time, volunteering to be recycling monitor
seemed conscientious, virtuous. I puffed up with
misplaced pride when I was asked to take on the
responsibility. Of course, when you’re the person
who naturally springs to mind to haul masses of
tuna tins - reeking with the intensity of a cadaver
left in the sun - or the sad, trampled heap of
cardboard shoe boxes that will never be called
upon to hold someone’s love notes or the fossils
that you found with your dad when you were
nine, it’s probably time to readdress your publicfacing
persona.
‘Oooh, yay, Vogue.’ It’s from March, 2016, but this
too, is probably the stage I’m at - at least a year
and a bit behind. Chucking it in the garden for
safekeeping, I lug the last box onto the sidewalk
(yes, sidewalk).
Job grudgingly - yet satisfyingly - done.
2400mm
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