‘What’s going on, Ann?”

It’s Mary Murtagh. A Tidy Towns stalwart. We’re out on a cleanup together and she’s as puzzled as I am. “Where’s all the rubbish gone, Ann? There were a load of photos of rubbish at the layby. I was looking forward to filling a few bags here. I wouldn’t have come out otherwise.”

I want to say, “Mary, it’s not my fault. What do you want me to do about it?” But I don’t. You can’t be putting backs up in the Tidy Towns.

“I know, Mary. It is a mystery alright,” I say instead. She’s not happy though. Mary doesn’t like mysteries, apart from the Rosary.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, Ann. I’d be as happy as anyone. But we need a big pile for the photos. If there’s no big pile for the photos, people will think the litter problem has gone away and if it’s gone away, they’ll do nothing about it, and then there’ll be too much litter.”

Rubbish

So where is the rubbish going? It’s not the council because the election is still miles away and they’ll be keeping their powder dry for a while. I’m expecting a big show of candidates to our clean-ups later in the year. We’ll have to have a rota so they’re not here on the same day and then they can’t do photos because the Other Crowd will jump in.

We get our answer soon enough. We’re looking in over the ditch at the layby when I hear shouting.

“Aw sweet, bro. A six pack! Ching ching.”

There they are. Three young lads, maybe 11 or 12, dragging massive bags of rubbish around with them. They’ve a pile of rubbish in front of them and they’re going through it. Picking out the cans, bagging them and then throwing the rest of it away. Or rather throwing it away again.

“What are ye doing?” I say.

“Taking care of business,” says one of them. I think he’s a Dooley, by the red hair on him. They were always pure cheeky.

“Making some dolla dolla bills,” he says. “We’re bringing this up to Lidl and getting money off them.”

“But you can’t do that till February,” says Mary.

“We’ll stash it and go up then.” Young Dooley isn’t a bit fazed.

“But that’s our rubbish,” says Mary, not realising how it sounds.

“Your rubbish?” says the red-haired fella again. Another one of them takes out his phone and starts recording. “This is turf war, lads,” he says into it.

Mary makes a dive for the bag.

“That’s not a good idea, Mary,” I say. “They’ll have you up for assault.”

Squad car

Then of all things, the squad car pulls in. They’d never be there when you’d want them.

The sergeant gets out. He seems to know what’s going on straight away. I find out later there was talk of young lads, ‘mooching around the road’.

The sergeant is of the old style. So he assumes we’re in the right. He clears them out of it with a few effs and blinds. And he confiscates their rubbish. The strangest miscarriage of justice I ever saw.

“I can’t believe you stole rubbish off a few 12-year-olds, Mammy,” says my eldest Deirdre, that evening. “I’ll give the money to the youth club or something.”

“You won’t get any money back because it’s only on bottles sold after February the first. You might as well be putting socks into the machine. When February starts, it won’t be just them young lads. Your own family might be out.”

“What?”

She shows me my grandson Adam’s tablet. “Look at this computer game they’re all playing. They have to collect plastic bottles and aluminium cans before the evil grownups do to get points. He’s already trying to get my credit card to pay for a thing called a Superpicker. You were ahead of your time, Mammy. Soon you’ll be out of a job in the Tidy Towns.” She says it like it’s a good thing.

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