Observer
It was the light bulbs which finally did it. Until the stupid, ghastly, stupid news about the light bulbs, I was on-side. I recycled. I separated. I cared. Before putting the bins out at night I would go through them. Move the bad plastic stuff to the little bin marked by the council with the one word 'plastics' because they didn't have space to spell out 'Bad plastic finger-cutting packaging, pointless, all you wanted was a carrot or a pen mate, never worry, me and Wilf'll still eat it, with our pigtails and big teeth, hurr hurr', and then move the papers to the paper bin, and the potato peelings would get dug in. And when I got terribly terribly caring about the environment I would spend an hour sifting the coffee grounds from the salt and the rest of the - is this a word? I do hope so! - moritz in my bin. Start my own bins and label them accordingly. 'Salt'. 'Coffee'. 'Things I've just seen around here which I have no further use for: the charger thing for the thing that broke; lone crampon; saxophone; her number; my ego.'That was all, of course, an utter hairy lie. I have been the most savage avoider of anything involving the word 'ethical' when combined with the word 'living'. Ethical living to me meant, basically, helping your friends when they were in trouble (as long as that didn't involve money or too many calls during Father Ted or anything, or having to hear a bloke crying) and getting out of the bath to go for a wee. Everything I eat or use I throw out, fast, and I have never wanted to learn to bake bread in rabbit holes or wipe my bottom with a sock or whatever it is they want me to do.
But I wasn't averse to those good souls who wanted to try. I could begin to see, at least in principle, the use of a bottle bank, would give it benign good-on-you-chum glances as I walked past, even though I had the same intention of using it as stopping in Oxford Street to have my brain futtled by Scientologists, or suddenly buying a pelican. There was no malice against the manic recyclers: it just wasn't for me. On, I think, the same basis that I hate weeding, and my flat is often less than uncluttered, the constant drip-drip of tiny, minuscule, repetitive and infinitely dull actions never seemed to hold quite the force of the (my) counter-argument that you're dead for an awful long time. Wait until the garden's a mess, till I can't get in my own door, until the risen seas are lapping us: and then I'll whirl and spray and dig and hoe, and blitz the place, and be first down to the Thames Barrier with my sandbags, because I can then see the difference.
Anyway. It was a benign antipathy. But then came the light bulb stuff - and now it's active, frantic dislike. We are to be no longer allowed to buy 'proper' light bulbs. Soon, supermarkets will stock only those low-energy, low-watt things apparently designed to invoke, on passing at dusk any house where they're employed, an ancient, infinite, weary sadness for the tears of mankind. And we will all have them. We will all be sobbing quietly indoors, all our happinesses on half-wattage, squinting in sepia. While planes belch overhead and a million machines chunder away in east London to one day let 10 people run quickly for 10 seconds (and don't you normally sort of stop school sports when you, sort of, leave school?), the rest of us are back in the Fifties. Doing our bit. Biding our time. Knowing our place. In the dark.
It's rather, I'm afraid, like those Leftie councils, suddenly crossing the line, suddenly losing us all. Do you think, they would ask (or not), it would be an idea to translate some of our leaflets into Urdu? Hmm, yes, sort of. Should there be a drop-in centre for single parents needing a bit of help? Absolutely. Should we open a Slovak creche for glutenintolerant flat-earthers - no, no, that's mad.
The Right will have your knackers, twirl them like inflated pig bladders on sticks, and rightly so, because it's mad and unfair, and you're about to undo everything, no no no.
Similarly, this time, the ecobunnies have lost us, and there will begin a vast backlash. When ordered to use ugly happy-sappinorld just whag light bulbs, to live a dull yellow, when refused the choice, we will suddenly not quite find the time nor the will to recycle. Or even to cycle. Muesli Martha will buy an SUV and roar about in fur. I will buy dull light bulbs, yes, but 50,000 of them, to light the street with a big sign telling the wt composting toilets and Zac Goldsmith are full of. My telly will be on standby every night. The little red light will help me read.
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