My "bit" - when recycling isn't just taking jokes from Rodney Dangerfield

So I'm still sick, and still grumpy - although I am now suspecting that Channel 7 will be round really soon to start filming my grumpiness with the extreme slow mo camera (boy they love that thing). Despite my aches, my desire to storm out of my job citing chronic fatigue and run away with either Alicia Sacramone or the bush pig girl from the Tamar Cats, I was able to stick it out, despite no fewer than three plays of Jason Mraz. When I was out walking today I saw this woman with her kid and they had obviously just watched a movie, and the woman was saying to her kid something about "now I hope that movie taught you how to care for the environment" and she was saying it like a threat or something and wagging her finger. Her tone just really annoyed me - she was all pompous in her big blue bomber jacket, and her concern for the environment didn't extend to, I don't know, not throwing a Gloria Jeans cup blindly over her shoulder onto the footpath. When I was a kid, the first film I saw was Katy Caterpillar, and the first film with a message I ever saw was My Girl with Anna Chlumsky and the message in that film was don't stuff around with beehives. I saw that film in an Ayrshire cinema, where it was playing I believe as a belated double feature with Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves, and was ruined by a wailer in the front row who bawled her eyes out when Mac Cs glasses hit the ground...so this woman has obviously dragged this poor kid, who was hoping probably to see, like, Elmer Fudd, along to see a PETA documentary or Bob Browns Fist Of Fun. I wanted to say, look, I know a great film that will help you learn about the environment...it's Wile E Coyote vs Road Runner, and you'll learn that cliffs are really bad and bits of them are likely to fall on your head. Of course, I said nothing, and kept on walking, and all day I've had that Standing Outside a Phone Box song in my head, which I can't download anywhere, and I was trying to remember the name of the band that sang it (just remembered, Primitive Radio Gods - Mother Theresas joined the mob, unhappy with her full time job - what a lyric), I almost got caught by the spruiker outside Millers who was trying to drag me into her act, and who's microphone I wanted to steal and do a tight ten of stand up, but I kept on walking...I kept on walking....

Still, I have been thinking today about my own environment - which is messy, cluttered and a little stagnant. By Male standards, I keep the house pretty clean. I owe my sense of cleanliness to my Dad. One day we were walking back from the local Spar in Scotland (which all and sundry referred to, apologies for this, as "The Pakis", in some kind of sub Love Thy Neighbour unironic way, because it was owned by two Pakistanis, who suffer much racial abuse, and who constantly had their Black Jack jar stolen from) talking about nothing in particular, that nothing as always being sport. I had a can of coke in my hand - incidentally, much later I would start drinking Caffeine free Diet Coke, or as my cousin called it, fucking tap water with flavouring - which was certainly not anything fancy, but as we talked, I kicked the empty can into some bushes. with a beautiful Saverio Rocca style torpedo punt. Obviously, this was littering, but what did that matter to someone who was so full of attitude as me - I mean, I had orange Fila boots! I was a rebel, the man. My Dad has out of nowhere turned furious and purple. "Whit ye deain!" he screamed, shaking an angry fist. I shrugged, confused that perhaps I had made a disagreeable point about the standard of Scottish football, until I noticed he was pointing directly at the bushes. "Yer can, get it oot the ferkin bushes! Ye manky wee toerag!" he said, much to the amusement of a wee old biddy at the bus stop. "You tell him, wee shite!" she said, chuckling, this beginning my life long love affair with the elderly. And so, he sent me right into the middle of the prickly bushes to fish out my can, jagging my top on some nettles as I fetched it. It really stung my hand badly, but of course, he was my Dad, and he had to be obeyed, lest I get a dull and tedious lecture on the couch (without Robert Walls) about morality and not littering. So, I fished the can out, and put it in the bin. "There ye go, you don't want to be clatty!" he said, and I've never once littered since then - although he doesn't know to this day that in the bushes, when I went in to get the can, I found a wallet on the ground with 100 pounds, which I used to purchase cheap bourbon at the Local Spar, and a new triangle for my pool table. When I told this story much later to my lost netball playing girlfriend, she was most indignant...she said she'd have used to money to hire her first male hooker. No wonder we split up...

I've had lapses though in keeping my own environment tidy. The worst I've ever been was when I lived in Mt Stuart, in my big share house, and my room was just awful and dirty and had junk everywhere - piles of neatly marked handwritten cassette tapes made from the radio, unfinished letters to friends (and Edie Brickell), unfinished bits of novels and clothes everywhere. Pretty soon into the year, it became clear that our much vaunted cleaning roster wasn't going to be adhered to. When I grew up in Burnie, we didn't have much of a recycling program, unless you took things to the tip, but this house had a compost heap (which smelt just lovely), and about 12 recycling bins. We stayed with this kid called James, who wanted to be a lawyer, but who had already had one nervous breakdown by the age of 20, and was constantly shaking. His job on the Marge Simpson rota wheel was to do the recycling of all the cardboard (my pizza boxes to be honest) and for whatever reason, he didn't do it - probably because he had this crazy idea of staying at uni and doing work (whats all that about) instead of having go kart races down the hill. Anyway, as a prank, one of the house "leaders" put the boxes in his bed, in his room, on his bookshelf...naturally, not really thinking through, oh I don't know, his nervous irrational disposition? Suffice to say, he went absolutely mental in a kind of diffident, nervous way. At our house meeting, he worked himself up to the kind of argument that I think all lawyers should adopt if trying a case (Room vs Pizza). "But...but...but...but..." he stammered, jabbing his finger in the air (or paying a tribute to Manchester Uniteds Nicky Butt, don't know)..."But...but...yep...but...um....", which to be fair wasn't quite "I want the truth" as far as a great court room moment. Drained of all his confidence, and broken down by the whole affair, he simply slumped back in his chair, and said "ah get fucked" - I so want him representing me I think if ever I'm up for the murder of Bernard Fanning. We all apologized and tried to move on, but nothing was ever the same for him after that, and he moved out not long after, taking his collection of vinyl records and debating trophies (what?) with him...I like to think he's somewhere out there now, saying "My Lord...but..er...what...um...ah get fucked...the defence rests..."

My Mum, who I haven't much talked about, is a shocking person for big tidy ups when you least expect it. Manys the time I've got up to read the paper and it's already in the bin. So moving countries the number of times we did was just manna from heaven for her, as it meant she could clear out piles of old junk like, oh I don't know, her original Beatles albums worth an absolute fortune (it still hurts). Our move back to Penguin from Scotland was a boon for the environment, since it meant she could throw more stuff out, and say things like "Ye'll no be wanting that!" when patently, I did want that, and would continue wanting that in the future. She organised all into a fantastically drilled trip to the Kilmarnock tip, to get rid of accumulated rubbish in socially acceptable colour coded piles, with everything drilled into the appropriate recycling bins with military precision. I remember feeling sick to my stomach at the pace that my environment had changed, desperately against my will, and I remember the sheer desolation that engulfed me that chilly Kilmarnock evening as the clouds rolled in, standing there feeling sorry for myself, not sure what moving back to Tasmania would bring. As I stood there bitterly watching things like the couch in my room and my triangle stacked on top of my memories inside a metal skip, two small kids, one in a blue tracksuit, one in a pink set of pyjamas, tiny children with blank expressionless faces, climbed into the skip and began clawing at the rubbish inside it, tearing open garbage bags to try and find something to take home. There were no adults anywhere near them, but they were clearly in massive trouble in this early stage of their lives. The girl stared at me staring at her, and bowed her head, as if she was ashamed of herself scavenging through the trash. My mate who was helping us move was laughing at the kids, because that's what we did, we laughed at everyone, but I couldn't bring myself to...at least I think I didn't, maybe I did, maybe I've ascribed myself morality in the story at a later age. The boy in the blue tracksuit then fell and plunged into the skip, losing his balance and almost impaling himself on the leg of a chair, and the girl had to hold him steady and pull him back up. Then it started raining, but they kept going, ploughing on through the black garbage bags, getting rubbish and trash all over them as they dug. I don't know what became of those kids, but I always remember it, how desperate they were, how hopeless their situation, how sad their faces...

I hope they made it, but somehow, I don't think they did...as for me, I'm really quite lucky I suppose...after all, I just bought My Girl on DVD...