There’ll always be someone to clean up for the dregs of society who have no pride
ASUPERMARKET bag stuffed full of domestic rubbish was left delicately perched against a tree around the corner from my house the other evening.
I had a peep in as I passed. An assortment of bottles, cans, wrappings and general domestic detritus.
Charming.
I walked on but ingrained civic pride made me turn around, retrace my steps, gingerly pick it up and lug it home.
If I didn’t, chances are it would have tipped over, with its ugly contents scattered by the elements, or circumstance, all over the road.
So suitably rubbergloved I separated out the recyclable from the rest and binned both, hoping I’d uncover a soggy document or envelope that would identify the slob.
No such luck. I mean, as if.
All I found were tinnies, gin bottles, a milk carton (half-full), Coke cans, Easter egg boxes, cigarette butts and assorted decaying gunge.
It nearly made me gag.
I didn’t bother to ask myself what sort of a person would do that. Because I know. Or at least I know the type.
They’re the sort who think their society and community owes them everything but that they don’t have any debt to pay in return.
That patriotism is for late-night rebel songs in pubs, but doesn’t extend to something as prissy as civic pride.
If this polluter has a dog, it’s a given that he doesn’t bag his animal’s dirt either.
Or if he drives, he doesn’t bother with tax. Or perhaps insurance.
Maybe neither.
Asfora TV licence? Well, you’re having a laugh now.
In a country where shouldering your fair share is generally regarded as being for honest mugs, it’s no wonder this knuckledragger can find a pick ‘n’ mix of justifications for not paying to dispose of his filth and crap. He knows that there will always be someone else there to pick up the tab.
In this case, quite literally.
Spy drama on the ball
MY addiction to Netflix is no less bothersome than anybody else’s. But I’m not blind to its weaknesses and it has more than afew.
It irritates me that for every decent movie it adds to its library, it piles in another half-dozen duds. It’s as if Netflix is the new straight-to-video. I remember years ago how I often spent an age browsing in Xtra-vision desperately hoping to happen upon something vaguely engaging to go with the Chinese takeaway.
Netflix can be like that sometimes.
Then I come across something special and all is forgiven.
Often that surprise gem isn’t something they’ve been banging on about either, but a series or movie that has come in under that radar. As if by accident. Or maybe stealth.
‘The Same Sky’ is one of those. It’s a German-made series set in 1970s East and West Berlin at the scary height of the Cold War, and anyone who was taken by the movie ‘The Lives of Others’ or drawn in by the TV drama ‘Deutschland 83’ won’t want to miss this.
Tense, historically astute and put together with fastidious attention to detail, it keeps you gripped and invested.
It even cleverly uses the World Cup of 1974 as a consistent motif, a useful device to lure those of us old enough to remember a fraught match between West and East Germany which was about a lot more than football.
‘The Same Sky’ has one weakness, however.
At six episodes it is almost over before it begins.
But the second series, my spies tell me, is just waiting for its papers.
Last curtain for the halcyon days
DOUGLAS in Cork city, an old stomping ground of mine during a gloriously misspent youth, is to lose a cinema and gain a discount store. Terrific plan.
Why settle for a picture house that sells you dreams, romance and adventure, when you can have another bargain shop that sells you cheap tat that you certainly don’t need and couldn’t possibly want?
Progress is indeed wonderful.