It’ll take more than gardening gloves and elbow grease to restore some civic pride

THe two-seater sofa was much heavier than we expected. As we heaved it to knee height, we understood why. Filthy water gushed from it.

We tipped it on its side and balanced it on an old fridge to let it drain. Next to it was an armchair which we turned upside down. A puddle soon developed around it. We’d leave those till last.

In the meantime, we collected the broken bits of a double bed and hauled them to where our cars were waiting, their seats folded down.

We gathered up the cushions caked in mud and placed them in the removal pile, then went back for the sodden mass of cardboard packaging and spent several minutes decanting armfuls of it into the blue recycling bins where it belongs.

Dumped

At this point I congratulated my friend on supplying two good pairs of gardening gloves for the task in hand. I really didn’t want my fingers touching this stuff.

Truth be known, neither of us wanted to be anywhere near it. It wasn’t our waste; we didn’t know where it had been or what had interfered with it in the months or years since it had been dumped in the Glasgow back court which stretched for some 150 yards behind a handsome row of tenements.

Indeed, so keen was my friend – who owns a flat there – not to be clearing up other people’s discarded furniture and white goods that she paid Glasgow City Council £140 to do it.

That was the figure they put on the job after she sent a detailed list of all the items which needed to be uplifted.

This was very philanthropic of her, but practical too. She is putting her flat on the market and didn’t want viewers to be confronted with a dumping ground when she showed them the back court.

But the uplift did not happen when the council said it would – and when a lorry did show up days later it removed only a fraction of the offending items. At the weekend, with just 48 hours to go before the first viewers were due to arrive, there was nothing else for it but to roll up her sleeves. I said I’d roll up mine too.

It was unpleasant work. For every item you tackle, you question the mentality of the householder who would drag it out the back, into an area overlooked by dozens of windows, and simply wash their hands of it.

There was a black gaming chair with armrests and builtin speakers.

Did the owner upgrade? Was he or she behind one of those windows right now, ensconced in computer gaming action, in a fancier chair while, below in the back court, we wrestled with the old one?

A mattress lying flat, a pool of rainwater in its middle – how dare they? Divan bed sections in a heap, mangled window blinds thrown on top...

We heard knocking from a first-floor window and, behind it, saw the horrified face of a pensioner. She thought we were dumping even more waste in her back court.

When she came downstairs to confront us, she said she had grown up in that first floor flat and, after decades abroad, had moved back there in 1996. She was now 88.

‘This back area used to be beautiful,’ she said, on hearing our assurances that we were here to do a bulk uplift at our own expense.

‘All the kids played out here and it was spotless.’

She said the rot first set in during her childhood in the 1940s when the dividing metal railings between tenement blocks were removed for use as armaments in World War 2.

But they were never turned into guns.

‘We watched them rust into the ground in the park down the road,’ she said.

With many dozens of tenement dwellers sharing the same back court, civic responsibility faded and those natural playgrounds began their decline into eyesores.

The rise of the buy-to-let market brought a higher turnover of residents and a lower threshold of giving a damn about the mess outside. The introduction of council bulk uplift charges, now levied as standard across Scotland, accelerated the urban decay.

Now back doorstep fly-tipping in the areas where this houseproud octogenarian used to play was endemic in inner city living. It became a feckless shrug of the shoulders to neighbours, such as she, who dispose of their waste appropriately – and a thumbed nose at the mugs, such as my friend and me, who were clearing up after them.

So much for the selfishness of the minority in tenement land which despoils quality of life for the majority.

Culpable

No less culpable is the local authority. Stepping out into the back lane which runs the length of this tenement row and serves the bin stores, I was staggered by the volume of waste, much of it flattened into the ground, forming a carpet of some 200 yards of detritus of every description.

And what do you suppose did the flattening? The wheels of the bin lorry, of course – the only vehicle robust enough to venture into the lane.

Does anyone onboard see the irony?

Does anyone call the job in? What do you reckon?

After laying down tarpaulin we managed to get the sofa, cushions and assorted bits of bed in my motor and the armchair, fridge and a headboard in my friend’s. We had no room for the gaming chair or waterlogged mattress so we tidied them as best we could.

Then it was off to the recycling centre where, for permission to do the job my friend had paid the council £140 to do, we had to show ID.

Along with all the other people’s waste, we threw away the gardening gloves. Both pairs were gubbed.

It was at this point my friend got chatting to one of the staff at the centre.

Wretched

Did he suppose she could expect a refund in view of the fact she had just done the job they were contracted to do yet failed to carry out either on time or in full?

The man didn’t think so. Despite their advisory information on the date the work would be done, they still have 28 days to do it before we’re in refund territory.

This week, outrageously, she received notification from them that the work was complete. Thank you for your custom. A sodden mattress, for one, says they are wrong.

Another thought occurred as I scanned those dozens of tenement windows.

Of the homeowners and tenants behind them, how many voted for more of the same in the council elections this month? I suspect the figure is depressingly high.

The local authority here, after all, remains SNP-run as it has been since 2017.

The same pertains in many shockingly poorly administrated council areas around Scotland.

How on earth is town and city life to improve if we persist in letting those presiding over its decline go unpunished? Forget the independence debate. Civic pride alone should keep this wretched mob out of office.

I hope the old lady on the first floor thinks her back court looks a bit better now.

She said thank-you, by the way, and gave us some bin bags. You should have seen her flat.

It was spotless.