Angry Person in Local Newspaper

It’s not often I get spontaneously contacted by the local paper for a sadface photo* but I was rung up on Monday in my role as (outgoing!!!) secretary of Nearest Village Community Council to see if I could go and be angry by the river where someone had flytipped some old computers into the water.

Actually this wasn’t too hard because it’s a particularly lovely spot. The last time I was looking over the bridge parapet it was to admire an otter, so finding that someone had used it to dump a load of electrical goods was pretty gutting. There’s a fair bit of flytipping near by (it’s a quiet road and vans can pull right off the road and out of sight) – but normally they confine themselves to chucking it into the bushes, not the river. I even folded my arms at one point, I was that cross.

Anyway, whether it was the folded arms that did it or what, I don’t know, but it attracted the attention of the local angling association who manage the fishing on that stretch of the river, and today they went on a slightly unorthodox fishing expedition and very efficiently cleared out the river. Unfortunately, there’s no sign that the police are at all interested in catching the perpetrators, or we would have gladly dropped off the hard drives so they could see if any identifying details could be retrieved.

If only all my sadfaces were so immediately effective. I wonder if the anglers might also be interested in building cycle lanes?

*Despite rumours to the contrary, it is not a statutory requirement that I be in the paper every week although my role in the Bigtown cycle campaign means I do seem to have to do more than my fair share of Angry People in Local Newspapers poses.