March 2020 saw the onset of a global pandemic, the end of my working visa, and the end of my lease. It was this strange confluence of events that would mark the end of my life in London. As I looked around my soon to be departed Finsbury Park flat, I found my mind preoccupied with mundane thoughts: What would I do with my spatula? What about all these household items I wouldn't be taking with me back home to Canada? Kitchen utensils, pillows, lamps. A cheap plastic IKEA kitchen table. There was nowhere for them to go. Charity shops were closed - everything was closed.
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My grandpa had a habit of collecting found treasures off the street for my brother and I. He’d arrive home, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth and a gift in hand: a mostly working typewriter, a steam-powered toy boat or a board game with a few pieces missing. He called it “G-picking”. (The G standing for garbage, of course) We were always delighted. We in turn became budding G-pickers ourselves. Walking home from the bus stop after school, we would G-pick to our little hearts’ content. I remember once struggling up the front stairs, gleefully presenting a discarded walker to my puzzled mother, who insisted we donate it to a nursing home.
The British also have a word for G-picking. They call it ‘Fly-Tipping’ and as far as I’m aware, it is a term unique to the Isles. Fly-tipping is extremely prohibited in England. English people love prohibiting. There are signs everywhere, warning you: Don’t even think about dumping your rubbish here. In the UK, Fly-Tipping is punishable by a small or severe fine, imprisonment, or even death (okay, not death).
Of course, we do have a similar law here in Canada - ‘No Illegal Dumping’. People don’t want other people dumping garbage on their front lawns. Fly-tipping in its proper sense refers mostly to actual garbage or oversized materials. ‘’Illegal’ waste”. But what about the kind of waste that doesn’t feel illegal? The reusable waste, like a mostly working typewriter or an old spatula? Surely, I can leave those outside my house and someone will pick them up to give them a happy new home? Not so on Axminster Road, in Finsbury Park, London. This just simply is not done.
Whereas, fly-tipping is a constitutional element of Canadian neighborhoods. Soft fly-tipping, anyway. Houses leave little offerings for pedestrians who happen to pass by. A house is a machine for living in. The house-machine spits out what isn’t essential and deposits it on the sidewalk. A reverse slot machine. A trash to treasure compactor. I wonder what Le Corbusier thought about g-picking.
Just last week, I came upon an entire box of fancy gold-wrapped chocolate bars, set out on the street by some anonymous Willy Wonka. People laying out their goods: it feels almost medieval. But, then again, maybe the British have a point. Does it make the neighborhood appear a bit messy? Sometimes, yes. Is this really the best way for people to get rid of their unwanted items? Probably not. Would a raccoon help himself to that sidewalk chocolate and spread some new form of cocoa rabies? Possibly.
But I can’t get enough of it. Witnessing this anonymous ritual of exchange connects me to where I live. It roots me here, on Somerset Street, in Centretown, in Ottawa. For a city of people adorned with the statistical moniker: ‘the most easily governed’, it adds some much-needed gentle anarchy to the mix.
Years ago, on a February afternoon, upon leaving high school for the day, my friends and I found a broken, but not broken-beyond-repair TV. We reverently scooped it up and documented its frosty bus journey to Virginia’s house, where we attempted to fix it. I’m not sure exactly why we were so excited about this silly TV, but the joy on our faces in these photos feels unrecoverable.
So what did I do with my London apartment items in those nebulous early-pandemic days? I had to pay Islington Council to take away a perfectly good Ikea table, along with the other smaller items. The removal fee cost double what the table had. I hated England for this stupid, austere rule.
I fought with my boyfriend, who had lived in London much longer than I had, about paying this fee. Everything was shut down - it was the perfect time to leave things out. Someone needs our spatula! He disagreed. He wanted to avoid jail time, I suppose. I, on the other hand, was prepared to go to the guillotine for some g-picking.
Caution is the enemy of joy. Moving back to Ottawa felt like the most cautious thing I could do. Nevertheless, now lamentably back home in ‘the city that fun forgot’ (another illustrious moniker), I take burgeoning pleasure in seeing these secular oblations on my streets. There’s joy to discover amid infertile ground.
