On Discarded Pushchairs

We passed a cordoned off area where the pavement had been pulled up for some pipe work, or something similar, and among the drinks cans and sweet rappers that had been thrown into that small site, there was now slightly bent and rusty pushchair. Rejected and discarded, it lay with the more common rubbish within those orange plastic barriers. And I began to wonder how it had arrived there, so unwanted and unloved. Perhaps a mum had been pushing her toddler when it suddenly occurred to her that their offspring had grown too large for such a vehicle. “You can walk from now on, Darren” she might have said “and we won’t be needin’ this and more!” as she tossed it into the nearest patch of excavated pavement.

Why is it that we so reliably discard our rubbish into these temporary holes? Is it that a few crisp packets are blown in by the wind, and then the area is repeatedly mistaken for a mini landfill sight? Is it a way of showing contempt for the unsightly roadside obstruction? I suspect it is a combination of opting for the path of least resistance (‘but it’s so much closer than that bin just over there’) and following suit (‘it appears that other people have dumped their rubbish in this hole, so I had better do the same’). Either way, we are a strange people, we who call ourselves civilised.