Sunday 20 April 2008

Forget plastic bags - ban shopping trolleys

I rarely ride on the weekend, but had to today in order to collect my bike from work. The weekend is my time away from the saddle - time to let the legs loosen up and the sweat pimples on my bum to heal a bit.

Riding on the weekend is a completely different experience for me, since there is no time pressure to be anywhere, and the people out and about are in a different frame of mind. At 6.30am on a weekday morning, The Bay Run will be chockers with power walkers and dog walkers and bike commuters - all of them in a hurry - and all the cyclists will be sticking to a tried and tested route and everyone will be hell bent on getting to where they are going. No deviation from the planned route is allowed - focus on the job at hand.

A weekend ride though is completely freeform for me. I don't do pack rides, since I have no desire to ride 10 times per week and then get up at sparrow fart on the weekend and ride again. Everyone needs a bit of time off. So I just do the solitary thing, meandering wherever the great spirit takes me.....um, wherever the fuck I feel like.

One diversion today had me riding alongside this canal, and what should be sticking up out of the water?



A shopping trolley. This one is really well disguised as it has obviously been there for some time, and it has collected all sorts of detritus in its frame. This is the third trolley that I have spotted in the last 12 months sticking up out of one of our local water features.

The answer surely is to ban them. Yep, get rid of shopping trolleys. They are more of a hazard to navigation than plastic shopping bags. So what if you've got six kids to feed and the daily shop consists of 2 gallons of milk, 5 kilos of washing powder and a small moutain of food and meat? You'll just have to do without the trolley. Bring a wheelbarrow from home instead.

That of course is the sort of stupid policy some Green is going to come up with one day. It pollutes the waterways! It has to go!

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