excrement could not, in all conscience, be calibrated as ‘litter’ (it decomposes for heaven’s sake! Same as an apple core!) once it has been placed inside plastic (no matter how laudable the motivation62) then it must necessarily be considered so.63
Horsmith’s pronouncement on this issue was obviously the most devastating blow for TP (and her cause), yet it by no means prompted her to desist from her antisocial behaviour. By way of an excuse for (partial explanation of/attempt to distract attention from) her strange, nocturnal activities, she suddenly changed tack and began claiming (see Doc. 6 again, last three paras) that – for the most part – whenever she goes on walks she generally bags up the vast majority of the faeces she finds and disposes of them herself (‘double-wrapped’, she writes – somewhat primly – inside her dustbin, at home64) and that on the rare occasions when she leaves the bags behind it is either because a) the ‘problem’ (as she perceives it) is so severe that she feels a strong, public statement needs to be made to other dog owners, b) the sheer volume of excrement is such that it is simply too much for her to carry home all in one go (while managing a large dog at the same time), and c) that she is sometimes prey to the sudden onset of acute arthritic ‘spasms’ in her fingers, which mean that she is unable to grip the bags properly and so is compelled to leave them in situ, while harbouring ‘every earthly intention’ of returning to collect them at a later date.
I am not – of course – in any way convinced by this pathetic, half-cocked hodge-podge of explanations. In answer to a) I say that other dog owners are completely within their rights to allow their dogs to defecate responsibly on the moor. They have the law on their side. It is a perfectly legitimate and natural way to proceed. In answer to b) I say that the volume of excrement on the moor is rarely, if ever – in my extensive experience of these matters – excessive (especially given the general rate of decomposition etc.). In answer to c) I say that it strikes me as rather odd that the same person who can apparently manage to ‘bag up’ huge quantities of excrement when their fingers are – ahem – ‘spasming’65 is somehow unable to perform that superficially much less arduous act of transporting it back home with them!66
Many of TP’s bags lie around on the moor for months on end and no visible attempt is made to move them. Last Thursday, for example, I counted over forty-two bags of excrement dotted randomly about the place on my morning stroll. Sometimes I come across a bag displayed in the most extraordinary of places. Yesterday I found one dangling up high in the midst of a thorny bush. It was very obvious that not only would the person who hung the bag there have been forced to sustain some kind of injury in its display (unless they wore a thick pair of protective gloves), but that so would the poor soul (and here’s the rub!) who felt duty-bound to retrieve it and dispose of it.67 This was, in effect, a piece of purely spiteful behaviour – little less, in fact, than an act of social/ environmental terrorism.
Shoshana and I have both become so sickened, angered and dismayed by the awful mess TP has made of our local area (I mean who is to judge when an activity such as this passes from being ‘in the public interest’68 to a plain and simple public nuisance?69) that, in sheer desperation, we have begun to gather up the rotten bags ourselves.
On Friday, two weeks back70, Shoshana gathered up over thirty-six bags. On her way home – exhausted – from the village’s poop-scoop bins71 she tripped on a crack in the pavement, fell heavily, sprained her wrist and dislocated her collarbone. 72 I will not say that we blame TP entirely for this calamity, but we do hold her at least partially responsible.73
After Shoshana’s ‘accident’ I marched over to TP’s bungalow, fully intent on having it out with her,74 but TP (rather fortuitously) was nowhere to be found. It was then – as I stood impotently in her front garden, seething with frustration – that I resolved75 to take the opportunity to do a little private investigation of my own. If you remember,76 TP had claimed that many – if not most – of the bags of excrement she retrieved from the moor, she automatically carried back home with her (only leaving the unmanageable excess behind) and placed them, double-wrapped, into her dustbin (alongside what I imagine would be the considerable quantities of excrement collected from her own four, chronically obese dogs which – as you know – she keeps penned up, 24/7,77 inside that criminally small and claustrophobic, purpose-built concrete compound78).
The day I visited Hursley End was a Monday, which is the day directly before refuse is collected in the village. I decided – God only knows why, it was just a random urge, I suppose – to peek inside her dustbin (literally deafened as I did so by the hysterical barks and howls of her four frantic German shepherds). By my calculation, I estimated that there would need to be at least forty-two dog faeces – from her own four animals – stored away inside there.79 In addition to these I also envisaged a considerable number of stools collected from her nightly hikes on the ‘filthy’ moor.80
Once I’d made these quick calculations I steeled myself, drew a deep breath, grabbed the lid, lifted it high and peered querulously inside. Imagine my great surprise when I found not a single trace of excrement within! The bin was all but empty! I say again: the bin – TP’s bin – was all but empty!! I quickly pulled on a pair of disposable gloves81 and then gingerly withdrew the bin’s other contents, piece by piece (just so as to be absolutely certain of my facts). I removed two large, empty Johnnie Walker bottles,82 four family-size Marks and Spencer coleslaw containers, three packets of mint and one packet of hazelnut-flavoured Cadbury’s Snaps biscuit wrappers, and the stinking remnants of two boil-in-the-bag fish dinners (Iceland) and one, ready-made, prawn biryani meal (from Tesco’s excellent Finest range).
I stared blankly into that bin for several minutes, utterly confounded, struggling to make any sense of what I’d discovered. It then slowly dawned on me that TP might actually have two bins – one of which was specifically to be used for the storing of excrement. Bearing this in mind, I set about searching the untended grounds of her property83 with a fine-tooth comb,84 even going so far as to climb on to an upturned bucket and peer, trepidatiously, into the tiny concrete compound to the rear, where TP’s four German shepherds barked and raced around – like a group of hairy, overweight banshees – frantic with what seemed to be a poignant combination of terror and excitement.85
No matter how hard I hunted, a second bin could not be found. I eventually abandoned my search on realizing how late it had grown;86 Shoshana would definitely be worried, I thought, and if I tarried any longer I could be in serious danger of missing Countdown.
