On Fridays the binmen collect orange plastic bags of recyclables and black bags of corruptibles. I have a particular image of what things would be like if they never came. Some decades ago friends wanted to buy a house in East Finchley. They had to track down an owner too ashamed of the state his house was in to put the place on the market. By the time I saw it skiploads of rubbish had been taken away, but there was still a mass of indeterminate material underfoot, even a fireplace stacked with used sanitary towels. One imagined a domestic breakdown: ëYou do it.í ëNo, you do it.í

LRB 2 June 2011 | PDF Download