Glasgow is a human right
On Sunday, at exactly 11:11am (spooky! *waves at all the Jordan Peele fans*), my friend Craig tweeted a photo of a bench in Queen’s Park.
At first glance it was hard to recognise it as a park bench, as it was engulfed in a mountain of brightly coloured broken plastic shards. A hangover from the few days of joy when — following a light dusting of snow — Glasgow decided it’s new favourite sport was setting children on a flimsy piece of over-priced plastic, then pushing them down a hill.
Craig asked, quite rightly: “What’s wrong with folk”. He intended it as a rhetorical question, I’m sure. But it got me thinking.
What is wrong with folk? We’re two weeks into a national lockdown. And 10 months into a global pandemic. Everyone is struggling. And in these times, public spaces are vital. More than that — as Craig said over an increasingly animated text exchange later that day — they are a human right. It’s basically the only space people have at the moment. To exercise. To spend time outside their place of lock down. To stand more than 2m away from a friend. To ensure they are looking after their health — both physical and mental.
It was really easy to get angry at the council. Sledgeageddon was a few days ago now, and it looked like nothing had been done since. But then I thought — their staff are snowed under at the best of times (no pun intended). They’re probably still dealing with shifting to remote working, and adapting to the constantly shifting rules. And staff will have the added stress of having to collect litter in the middle of a pandemic for a deadly disease that we still don’t fully understand — but do know that it is passed on through physical contact.
So then, it was really easy to get angry with the perpetrators. And… it is still really easy to get angry with the perpetrators. But I did think — there was one person who was the first to put their broken plastic sled in a bin. And there was another person who was the first to find the bin full, and left their broken sled propped up next to it. And so, as with all these things — and not to undermine a nuanced point with a silly pun — the whole thing snowballed. (Sorry.)
My partner Faith and I were meeting our friend Jayson for a walk in the park that day anyway. And really — Craig’s photo was just the tip of the iceberg. (iceberg.) There was carnage everywhere. It was worse than the aftermath of Hogmanay. (And as anyone that was in Queen’s Park for Hogmany will know — that’s impressive.)
And any time I bumped into someone I knew (not physically), the rubbish was the first thing they mentioned. So I thought — well, why don’t we just do something? It’s going to take the council a while to sort it. And when they do, it’ll be an overworked, under-resourced team on minimum wage that are doing it. Why can’t we just sort it ourselves, rather than walk around tutting at what a mess people have left in our park?
So just as it only took one person to leave their broken sled on the ground to make it acceptable for everyone else, once someone raised the idea of a clean up — suddenly so many people were keen to help out.
On the same walk around the park, I bumped into my friend Rollo. He immediately started talking about how bad the mess was, and so I suggested we should start a community clean up. Really just to see what he thought of the idea. He and his partner were the first recruits.
So I went home, set up a WhatsApp group, and 9am the next morning there was a team making a start at shifting the rubbish into bin bags and out of the way. A lot of people wanted to help, but were working. A lot of people were working, but were closed enough to the park that they were still able to chip in.
My neighbours Anna and Daisy came and did an hour before their work started 10am. Liam came and helped out from about 10.30. And Pete and Kim came on their lunch break. But, unfortunately for them, by that time everything had been done.
Our original plan was to bag everything up, put it in a pile behind Clyde The Thistle, then leaving a sign on it that read: “IT WAS F*CKING WAN OF YOUS. DISGUSTIN.”
But half an hour in, I spotted a council van emptying some of the bins, so went over for a chat. After eventually convincing them that the guy with his own custom municipal overalls complaining that someone had taken his bag full of rubbish was *not* crazy, they relaxed a little. They said that the clean up had actually started on the Sunday — but the team had spent all day, and only shifted about a third of what was there.
They were very helpful, if a little taken aback that there was a team of volunteers giving up their Monday morning to help. But they advised we could get litter pickers from the council next time if we give them enough notice, and provided us with some strong bin bags. (The ones I’d bought from Morrisons were a bit thin. But that’s no criticism of Morrisons — they were household bin liners. Not Morrisons fault. Morrisons 4eva.) They also said we could just leave any full bags on the path and they would do a sweep in the van to collect them.
Basically I got to spend a few hours exploring Queen’s Park, help make it a nicer place to spend time, and come up with some really terrible puns with one of my best pals. And most people that walked past would tell us what a great job we were doing, and how we were really nice boys. I can’t stress enough how helpful that is for your mental health. (I’m assuming that not all of them thought we were doing Community Service.)
So we now have the bug. And are planning to keep it going. We have a WhatsApp group (‘Trash Talk’) to discuss what we could do next. Maybe weekly mini clean ups. Maybe hit some other parks in the city. We’ll see.
If anyone is into this, here is the link:
We’re still deciding on a name for the group. And everything really. Totally open for suggestions/input on this.
But let’s KEEP IT CLEAN. Glasgow is a human right.