Take your litter home - to yours, not mine

AS Victor Meldrew would have said, I just don’t believe it. I had planned on regaling you all closer to the New Year with annual rubbish figures for litter dumped in my front garden, but these past few days have proved the last straw.

Donations have ranged from the inevitable sweet and crisp wrappers to an astonishing collection of booze bottles and take-away trays.

A quick phone call to the council reassured me that they hadn’t listed my property as a handy extension to Lodmoor tip, so what the hell is going on?

So far this year I’ve had the dubious privilege of having to pick up more than 500 items from in front of my house at the rough rate of ten per week and believe you me there have been some pearlers.

In the name of sanity what are people doing walking the streets carrying a stabilising bar from a washing machine never mind dumping it in my garden?

And what about How To Look After Your Hamster, an extremely interesting book I’m sure but hardly reason to tear it in half and dump it in my garden!

Then we’ve had barrowloads of newspaper sheets, pieces of cardboard, polystyrene, old pens, ice lolly wrappers, car park tickets, half-eaten bags of chips, cigarette packets by the battalion, beer cans, empty cigarette lighters and even a used lipstick holder.

You never find a discarded £20 note, do you, and I’m sure that as the festive season draws closer, I can look forward to offerings up to and probably including discarded fast food partridge leg bones and the odd sticky but empty Christmas pudding wrapper.

I bet it was a flytipper who said it is better to give than to receive.

Just call your friendly local neighbourhood witch

WITCHES are alive and well and living on Portland.

It is amazing what you can stumble across on the internet as I found out while trying to track down the origins of a particular herb.

Google swiftly answered my query but what also caught my eye was an offering lower down the page from a self-proclaimed witch living on Portland.

She was quick to set her stall out that she was not some crone crouched over a cauldron stirring away at eye of newt and toe of frog.

Far from it for this was a respectable witch delving into potions made from herbs.

She said she was not in to mainstream spell casting but was not averse to a ritual here or there.

Well that’s all right then, although it would perhaps have been more useful to the community as a whole if she was able to come up with a few powerful examples of magic.

Think of the unbounded joy if she could complete all Weymouth’s roadworks with a simple wave of her wand or whatever she uses.

Then perhaps she could deal with all those unwanted cheerful phone calls from double glazing salesmen, out of tune 2am singing drunks and drivers who force their way out in front of you and have the gall to give you a little wave while doing so.

The list is endless but now, perhaps, we can shorten it a bit with a simple call to our friendly neighbourhood witch.

Is there a road kill solution?

YOU rarely see wildlife as you drive along and it may be because many animals are lying dead in the gutter.

On a recent trip from Weymouth to Taunton the grim tally began to mount within a mile of home until it reached levels which were quite macabre.

I counted more than a dozen dead badgers which were kept company by an incredible range of creatures from pheasants, crows and hedgehogs to rabbits, foxes and squirrels.

Just to round it all off we were delayed on the way back by a large number of blue lights round an accident which seemed to indicate that perhaps a few humans had been added to the toll as well.

Then, on arriving back in Weymouth, I saw the remains of three gulls on Dorchester Road within the space of half a mile.

Don’t know what the solution is or even if there is one.

Cuts or no cuts, some people still need help

SHE was absolutely furious and heaped abuse on the object of her scorn.

The tirade continued all the way down the pavement towards me in Weymouth town centre without once letting up long enough for her victim to get a word in by way of reply.

Even if she had stopped her criticism there would still have been no reply because this poor woman was talking to a wall.

I’m sure it was a particularly evil wall, but it doesn’t get away from the fact that the number of people with mental health problems is growing.

Local and county councils are desperately trying to trim their budgets to survive ahead of the spring financial debates, so let’s all hope that one of the things to be cut back isn’t facilities for these people. There are enough people talking to walls without sending them to one as well.

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