I hate litter. I mean really f*cking hate it- in fact it might be the one thing that winds me up beyond anything else. I just cannot comprehend what is going on in the pea-brains of the morons that do it that makes them think it acceptable to throw their shit on the floor.
I was once stood outside the back of my work having a fag when I heard the rattling of a drinks can, and turned to see one rolling across the car park. There was no wind, so I was wondering to myself what had prompted its movement when I saw another one come sailing through the air and land near to the first. I went to investigate.
Parked just round the corner, in front of the shop, was a car with two kids in it and the sunroof open. The only car in the car park. The obvious source. So I picked up the two cans and threw them back through the sunroof, before returning to my smoking corner. A few minutes later I hear the car door open, the engine start, and in dismay see the two cans flying back through the air to land back where they started. Unbelievable.
We would often shut-shop at the end of the day to find a car park full of rubbish, usually fast food wrappers and bags. We had two bloody-great industrial bins round the back, had anyone ever bothered to ask.
A few years later I'm sat in the car in a retail park, waiting for the wife to finish shopping. We'd had a heated debate about whether to get coloured or white Christmas tree lights, and having lost the battle I'd returned to the car to sulk. I watch as a couple in their mid-40's return to their car parked in front of mine- some unnecessary 4x4 affair. They get in, the engine starts, then just as they're about to pull away the passenger door opens, a hand reaches down and dumps a McDonalds bag on the floor. I wish I'd been a bit more on-the-ball and filmed the b*stards. Do these people not own bins?! Even in the unlikely event that they don't, they were in a retail park- the place was full of them!
In the latter months of my time in the UK we were struck by a plague of scumbag kids. Now if anyone knows how to litter, it's them. They'd loiter outside the local shop for hours-on-end, and the wrappers of everything they consumed went on the floor. Not in either of the two bins within yards of their congregation spot. Not in the bin bag hung from the shop railing that the staff had put there in some half-arsed attempt to mitigate the problem. On the floor. You'd come out in a morning and play spot-the-pavement.
There's a category of litterer even worse than this though. One where the action is so illogical that crediting them with having a pea-brain is probably being too generous. My mate Bob and I used to do a bit of hill-walking and wild camping, and it's there, when you get to the top of a mountain and find an empty pop bottle, or a crisp packet stuffed into the cracks of a dry-stone wall, that you really die a little inside.
What on earth possesses the person, who has spent their day enjoying the countryside, climbing a mountain, taking in the views, to sully it with a pop bottle that was no inconvenience to carry up there when it was full, but now it weighs next-to-nothing and can be crushed to a fraction of its former size becomes such an overwhelming burden that the only possible solution is to dispose of it on the floor of the place they have spent all day hiking up to appreciate?! And the crisp packet, famed for its cumbersome nature when empty, won't fold up neatly and stow discreetly in a pocket, so really the only option is to stick it in a wall. Absolutely f*cking brain-dead.
Thankfully in Spain, littering has yet to become the socially-accepted norm that it is in the UK, but you still come across it. It's almost worse in a way when you do- for some reason that single piece of litter on an otherwise spotless road stands out like a beacon, and is a sad and constant reminder that no matter where you go in the world, you're never far away from an idiot.
