A New Language.

I have just returned from a brief walk around Hexham - from the West End where I live, then a little way up Priestlands, and on to the footpath that leads through the woods to the reservoir, below which is my allotment.

Through the woodland runs a stream. I stood on the bridge and photographed it. The area is very small. This is some of the rubbish I found there:-

The largest and most interesting piece was a plastic tray, which my historical expertise estimates to be from some time around 1975. Here it is, close-up:-

 

 

It was actually very handy, as it meant I could pile all the other rubbish on top of it and bring it home:-

 

 

 

Later, I will set about sorting into recyclable and non-recyclable and then dispose of it. I shall look forward to this task.

 

 

The area where I found all this stank. I thought it was the smell of boy wee at first, but as I stepped down into the stream, I saw this:- 

If you look closely, you will see two fish heads, one fish tail, a fish skeleton and a polythene bag.

I am not a scientist, so I am not going to go about finding out the cause of death of these fish. It could be anything from natural predators to shallow waters to disease. It might be that the fish died further upstream and, along with the rubbish, were swept to this area. I have no idea.

But we could imagine that the fish ate or got somehow wrapped up in the polythene bag. In that way, the beautiful little stream in Hexham acts like a microcosm of the sea. Plastic enters the water from somewhere; it is swept by the current to somewhere else, marine life eats it or gets tangled in it, then it dies.

Oh, who cares? It's only a sodding fish and every time I got rejected by some unappreciative love interest in my twenties (i.e. lots of times), I was told there were plenty more fish in the sea. This, actually, is untrue these days. Gross over-fishing and the accumulation of plastic in the sea means that, come 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. Therefore, language will also need adapt.

'Plenty more plastic shit in the sea,' will become the new phrase with which to console the young and heartbroken, thereby symbolically reinforcing the idea that they all might as well fucking give up on love because it's just a fat load of carcinogenic shit.

I am very much in favour of this phrase.

But anyway, I digress. Back to the dead fish. I can see that two dead fish might not break your heart enough to make you care very much about plastic in the sea. But those fish are in turn eaten by larger, more charismatic marine life and cause damage to them. They are also, of course, eaten by humans. Research on the impact of plastic in the human body is still in its infancy, but it is unlikely to have many health-giving benefits. Current thinking suggests plastic chemicals can cause infertility in men and increase the risks of some cancers. There is a fuller article on the issue here.

For these and many other reasons, I am setting up Plastic-free Hexham. It will mostly involve my market stall selling refills of household cleaning products and food items but as we approach Christmas, I will also be selling gorgeous Christmas fabric and ribbons as an alternative to wrapping paper and sellotape. In five years' time, if I have my way, Hexham at Christmas will be totally reusable.