I walk along flowering lanes
flanked by hawthorn and gorse,
and a car roars by at break-neck speed
leaving a cloud of exhaust,
and in the ditch they’ve chucked a pile
of cigarette butts and, even worse,
the remains of fast-food breakfast,
plastic packaging and a dirty nappy;
obviously, the child’s meal with plastic
toy didn’t make it happy.
It’s all rubbish, human detritus
dumped by the side of the road
where irresponsible humans unload
their trash instead of taking it home.
Kim M. Russell, 19th April 2021
My response to NaPoWriMo Day Nineteen, also linked to earthweal open link weekend
Another week of NaPoWriMo starts with a challenge to write a humorous rant, excoriate to our hearts’ content all the things that get on our nerves.
writing in north norfolk 
It’s bad enough not bothering to recycle it, but dumping it by the road is literally the pits 😳.
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One time were driving behind a car and the passenger in the back seat wound down the window and threw out a dirty nappy, various wrappings and several plastic bottles. We were lucky the nappy was so badly soiled it didn’t fly onto our windscreen. 😫
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😳 I have noticed Ollie thinks it’s funny to throw litter so I’ve had to teach him not to. But he is three years old! I just can’t understand why any adult would behave like this.
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You just want to jot down their license plate, track down their address, and invite everyone to go dump their waste on the offender’s front lawn…
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Good idea, Ron!
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And we all share the same space 😬
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The people who leave their rubbish everywhere don’t seen to see it that way.
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Which is all utterly appalling, how readily, thoughtlessly some cast their own remains over an earth that would just as well have shut of us. I am so tired of picking up after others.
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Me too.
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The detritus of the grazing oaf.
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“Oh it’s okay, the money we’ve saved is going to charity.” Kim, I take it you run, back in the days before the clean air push those car exhausts would choke a person.
..
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No running these days, Jim. I walk with a stick. The British governemnt is trying to cut down on emission, but we still get a lot of exhaust along the main road.
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I hate litter. It’s just the epitome of laziness and selfishness. We drove to the Whitsundays (Queensland) a few years ago (nearly 2000 kilometres each way). So many of the places we stopped (apparently in the middle of nowhere) were awash with litter. It was enough to make me cry. It’s why I am so sad that Musk wants to start a settlement on Mars. We need to clean up here before we take our rubbish further afield What are we leaving our little ones?
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I dread to think what will happen in the future.
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Difficult indeed to sing of human trash. (There is A.R. Ammons’ book-length psalm “Garbage.”) An unhappy nappy indeedy. Such trash condemns the litterers a landfilled life, for sure. (Let’s excoriate DuckDuckGo too for littering our blogs with digital nappies.) – Brendan
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A tricky topic but a necessary one.
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The lanes and roads leading out of town are are liined with McDodalds packaging. It is worse now, as the volunter litter picking groups cannot do their work.
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I can’t believe the way people behave, Kim. We were taught to hold on to our rubbish until we found a bin or we took it home with us.
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I really don’t understand why people can’t take their litter with them. Anyone witnessing this kind of behaviour over here will record their license plate and report them, as littering carries a hefty fine in these unspoilt parts. In addition, more signs have been installed educating visitors on good practice and the country access code, which seems to help. We have many volunteer litter picking groups and, thankfully, we have less and less litter to pick as the messages are slowly getting across.
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It’s horrible for the people who live around here because they keep their villages clean. It’s people passing through. I wonder if they do that in their own neighbourhoods.
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I will never understand this kind of behaviour. And it is rampant. It keps the rest of us busy trying to clean it up. The meal not making the tummy happy is a good line – heaven knows what is in those “meals”.
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I despair, Sherry!
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