12th July 2010 A Sign of the Times?

2010-07-12 @ 20:15:00 by ashtonboatman


A sign of the times.

It was a hot sunny day and I was busy working on the boats at Portland Basin when I noticed a wheelbarrow parked on the towpath across the canal. As we have wheelbarrows on the boats for collecting on recycling trips, I went over to see if someone had borrowed on of ours. When I got there I could hear banging and slushing noises from the other side of the stone wall. The ground drops steeply down about 20 feet of wooded rocky bank to the River Tame. I looked over and saw three men sploshing about in the river and dragging out rusty bikes, scaffold poles etc. One of them saw me looking and explained that they had decided to clean up the river.

This public spirited explanation was slightly marred by the fact that they only seemed to be removing metal objects, leaving behind much, equally unsightly, but valueless, plastic.

They dragged their ochre encrusted booty up the bank, over the wall and managed to load it into the sagging barrow ( which wasn't one of ours). I imagine they must have had a van nearby because it's over 2 miles to the nearest scrapyard that takes iron.

I think it's a good thing that people clear up and weigh in the clutter that others have carelessly discarded, but I also see desperation in the men's actions. I haven't seen this sort of activity since the 1980s when long years of unemployment spurred the picking up of beer cans, dragging ditches for scrap metal and other forms of scavenging. Anything to make a few bob to try to make ends meet. Are we now going to have another no hope generation like that of the Thatcher years? Growing up with no understanding of the concept of working for a living.