Urban confetti

31 May Urban confetti

Confetti. The word flitted into my mind today as I walked the local streets. Maybe it was an unconscious association to news reports of Bojo and Carrie’s secret wedding, so secret, in fact, that I doubt there was any confetti involved or that the few invited guests would have had time to stock up. In any case, perhaps like John Lewis wallpaper, confetti is much too common for the couple from No 10. [I must watch I don’t drift into catty gossip… but so many things to speculate about these nuptials not least the venue in a Catholic cathedral where normally a divorcee is persona non grata at least when cast as bride or groom. Maybe a second divorce somehow cancels out the first… blah, blah, blah. Who knows?]

So, the word was in my head as I trod the familiar streets heading to the allotment. My eye caught a large piece of plastic packaging, the tray of a Tesco Chicken Sweet Chi… the rest of the label torn away. No doubt it had blown here from a recycling bin somewhere or maybe it was dropped from a car speeding past whose passengers lack a social or environmental conscience. The image of the plastic tray came to rest in my mind so much so that I kept my head down as I continued on my journey, scanning the world underfoot. 

I was passing Bushy Park, the huge oaks along its edge towering above the high wall of old brick.  Twigs broken into tiny fragments, spent blossom crumbling and brown, last season’s leaves dried out almost to dust, all these gathered into mounds at intermittent but irregular intervals along the way nudged together in an almost imperceptible dip in the pavement and mustered by the action of the breeze or passing traffic. Takeaway cups, their paper bodies occasionally still with their plastic heads or else battered and flattened, make a regular appearance often joined by used face masks, standard issue pharmacy blue with white borders or a medley of cotton ones plain, striped, patterned, sombre, garish, grubby. Cigarette butts are a rare sight these days. It seems the mostly middle classes living hereabouts may have kicked the habit, just the odd fag end added to the mix here and there by an unrepentant smoker or a visitor from elsewhere. 

Every now and then a small, thin black plastic bag, its tie handles knotted around a cargo of excrement lies discarded. Perhaps the crows will open it up and have a sniff. I can feel the hairs in my nostrils recoil at the thought. These can’t all be accidental drops and I’m puzzled how someone would take the trouble to bring the bag, pick up the poop, tie it up and then not put it in the bins supplied for that very purpose before they leave the park or just take the stuff home. City dwellers have flocked to the parks this last year, some of them with their lockdown-acquired dog and their takeaway coffee, a face mask slipping out of their pocket as they reach in to pull out a fresh poop bag, curl up their noses and maybe look away as the little package slips from their hand. [Gossipy and disapproving – I really must watch out.]

Urban confetti. The story of our times. A floor show of modern city life, an imprint of how we are, how we consume and chuck away. The sun is just breaking through, burning off the morning cloud and a shaft catches the silver innards of a torn crisp packet that’s lodged itself below the kerb above a drain and is flapping in the breeze. A surgical-style glove in a gorgeous cobalt blue clutches one of the metal poles of the bus shelter. Urban confetti but where is the wedding, I ask myself as I gaze on the dark and obstinate plastics that lurk among the clumps of gradually decomposing leaves and twigs attempting to pursue their natural life cycle. And maybe it’s right there in this cohabitation here beneath my well-trodden boots, an eloquent but wordless marriage of despair and hope.