Slumped on the edge of it was the two-story cottage. Originally made of stone, it had been patched with brick and then patched again with what looked like dirty snowballs. The ground-floor windows had panes the size of tarot cards, and those were nice, as were the interior walls, which were crisscrossed with beams. The ceilings had them too, all corroded by worms and beetles.
“We’ll take it,” Hugh told me, this while standing in the living room, before we’d even seen the second floor. What with such a bucolic view—sheep grazing in the shadow of these great, verdant hills—the work seemed inconsequential. “Give these people what they’re asking, and do it today so we can get started.”
If I had hesitated he would have left me. Because that’s how Hugh is. You do not stand in his way; this I learned a long time ago. I also learned to trust him, especially in regard to property. Aside from the view, he liked that the place had not been modernized: none of the Sheetrocked closets or prefabricated shower stalls you’d just have to rip out and redo. Because the house was Grade II listed, broken windows could be replaced but not double-paned, as that would keep out the historic cold. Gutters and chimneys could be repaired, but you couldn’t put skylights in the attic or even insulate the walls, as that would amount to smothering the original beams. Hugh asked if an interior kitchen door could be moved two feet to the left, and when the answer came it was not just “no” but something closer to “hell no.” It’s as though we had asked to have ice cubes in our wine, like, “Ick, who are you?”
We bought the house in late July and gave the previous owners three months to pack. I was out of the country when Hugh got the keys and the builders began what turned out to be a yearlong occupation. A lot of what they did was invisible. By this I mean drainage ditches and septic tanks. The ancient roof was taken off, and when it was put back on using the exact same lichen-covered tiles, it didn’t look any different. Rotten floorboards were pried up, the mildew problem was seen to, and then the plumber and electrician arrived.
While the builders worked on the cottage, Hugh lived in what used to be the stable but was later converted into a guesthouse, the kind you’d have if you wanted to either discourage guests or contain them in one spot while slowly depressing them to death. It was especially grim in the winter, when in order to get warm you had to stand directly before the fireplace. There you’d rotate like a stump of gyro meat and wonder when the next train could carry you back to London.
By the time I finally joined Hugh in the stable, it was December, and I began to notice the many things that had escaped my attention on my previous visit. For instance, there’s a gliding club a mile and a half away. On a website, its members rhapsodize about how peaceful it is. And they’re right, gliders are quiet. The propeller planes that tow them into the sky, on the other hand, are like flying chain saws, and on a clear day their presence could be almost constant.
What really got to me, though, was all the rubbish on the sides of the road. In London the idea is that if you put something on a wall or stuff it between the slats of a fence, it doesn’t count. Like it’s only really litter if it touches the ground, at which point it’s the wind that did it, not you. It’s frustrating, but I’d grown to expect trash in a city. In the countryside, though, and in such beautiful countryside, it’s heartbreaking, one of those things that, once you notice it, you can’t stop noticing.
Our property faces a winding, tree-lined lane that leads to Amberley, a village so picturesque and meticulously cared for that it seems almost false, like a movie set. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said the first time I saw it. Because it’s almost too much: the cozy pub, the twelfth-century church, and the two dozen or so perfect cottages, many with sloping thatched roofs. The center of life is a little food shop, and walking to it on that first December afternoon, I saw more litter than I had the entire fifteen years I spent in Normandy. I said to a woman I passed along the way, “Did a parade just come through?”
When I mentioned the trash to the neighbors, they agreed that it was a disgrace. “It wasn’t like this thirty years ago,” said the woman in the house to the right of ours. She couldn’t tell me why things had changed. It was just part of a general decline. In that regard it was like graffiti, something that had inexorably spread until people lost the will to fight against it. Then, to make themselves feel less powerless, they decided it was art. I tried looking at the trash that way: Oh, how the light plays off that vodka bottle! Look at the bright blue candy wrapper, so vivid against the fallen brown leaves. It didn’t work, though.
On my second day at the house I got on my bike and rode to the town of Pulborough. The first few miles are on narrow roads cut through a magnificent forest, the floor of which is relatively free of underbrush. This makes it easier for the deer to run, and affords a clearer view of the trash, entire bags of it sometimes. These are sacks of household garbage that people feel inclined to abandon for one reason or another. They’ll dump appliances too: microwaves, television sets, outdated sound systems released into the woods like they’d be happier there. There’s a landfill these things could be taken to, but it costs money and you’d have to go out of your way, so why not feed it all to the foxes? They like stereos, don’t they? And panini makers with frayed cords? Building supplies are another big item—cans of polyurethane, broken cinder blocks. Joint compound. Hot water heaters.
On the other side of the forest there’s a busy two-lane road. I’d been riding on it for a quarter of a mile when I came upon a man collecting garbage into a plastic bag. He looked to be in his late forties and wore a stocking cap pulled low over his forehead. “Excuse me,” I said, “but is someone paying you to do this?”
It was a wet day, and as a car barreled past, spraying me with mud, the man told me that he was acting on his own. “I live along here, and when the rubbish gets to be too much, when I just can’t stand it anymore, I come out and collect it.”
Another car sped by, and I said the queerest thing. “Well, you…,” I told him, “you are just a…really good…citizen.”
My face burned as I rode away, but later I’d reflect upon my goofy compliment and I would be glad that I’d stopped to offer it. It’s not that I changed a life or anything, but as the weeks passed and I eventually became that man by the side of the road, I’d grow to understand the value of a little encouragement.
Pick up litter, and people assume that it’s your punishment, part of your court-mandated community service. Is it him who’s been breaking into toolsheds? they wonder. Him who’s been stealing batteries from parked cars? At first I worried what passersby might think, but then my truer nature kicked in, and I became obsessed. When that happened there was no room for anyone else, except, occasionally, for Hugh, who does his part but won’t pull the car over to collect every plastic bag he comes across. He can talk about litter, but when the topic shifts to the price of heating oil or the correct way to lay a paving stone, he can shift with it. For me, though, there is no other topic.
Here’s who I’ve turned into since we moved to West Sussex: On a good day—a dry one—I don’t have any mud on my clothes, just the usual dirt from crawling under fences, this to chase down empty bottles of Lucozade, an energy drink that gives its consumers the power to throw more bottles farther. My arms are scratched from reaching into blackberry bushes for empty potato chip bags, of which there are a never-ending supply, potato chips in the U.K. being like meals in space. “Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak” a bag will read, or the new “Cajun Squirrel.”
Since cleaning roadsides has become my life, my fingertips have turned black, like spent matches, this the result of prying up bottle caps. There are almost always leaves and twigs in my hair, and because I know I’m going to get filthy, I dress for the occasion: in rags, like a hobo.
“You need to get yourself a good stick,” one of my neighbors said. “The kind with a nail on the end. That’ll save you from having to bend over.”
It’s a nice thought, but adding a harpoon to the
mix would only make me more of an outcast. Then too, it might prove hard to carry. When I first started trash collecting, I did it on foot. Moving farther afield, I took to riding my bicycle, tying a bag of garbage to my rear fender and balancing a second, much larger one on my basket. On my back there’s a knapsack with moist towelettes in it. These I need after picking up dirty diapers or packs of spoiled meat that maggots are living in. I say to myself, Just leave it, but if I did, the road wouldn’t be clean, just almost clean, which is the same as fairly dirty.
Pedaling home through the forest, I’ll peer over my full, teetering trash bag and review my efforts: not so much as a cigarette butt to spoil the view. Enjoy it while you can, I think, for by the next morning it will be defiled. Once, I found a stroller with the seat burned out, this as if the child had spontaneously combusted. Weeks later I came upon a sex magazine, but for the most part it’s the same crap over and over, the crisp bags, the empty cans of beer and Red Bull, the endless Cadbury and Twix and Mars bars wrappers. The soda and candy point a finger toward kids, but according to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, one-quarter of the population readily admits to throwing trash out the window. That’s thirteen million people I’m picking up after, and not one of them seems to appreciate it.
One afternoon while driving back from the beach, Hugh pointed out a McDonald’s bag vomiting its contents onto the pavement. “I say that any company whose products are found on the ground automatically has to go out of business,” he said. This is how we talk nowadays, as if our pronouncements hold actual weight and can be implemented at our discretion, like we’re kings or warlocks. “That means no more McDonald’s, no more Coke—none of it.”
“That wouldn’t affect you any,” I told him. Hugh doesn’t drink soda or eat Big Macs. “But what if it was something you needed, like paint? I find buckets of it in the woods all the time.”
“Fine,” he said. “Get rid of it. I’ll make my own.”
If anyone could make his own paint, it would be Hugh.
“What about brushes?”
“Please,” he said, and he shifted into a higher gear. “I could make those in my sleep.”
A few days later, returning from the butcher in Pulborough, he presented me with his goatskin-sack idea. “Everyone gets one, see. Then, if you want a soft drink or a takeaway coffee or whatever, that would be your mandatory container.” He seemed so pleased with himself. “It could even have a strap on it,” he said. “Like a canteen but soft.”
“Well, wouldn’t people just throw those out the window?”
“Too bad if they do, because they’re only allowed one of them,” he said.
“And how would you clean it?” I asked. “What if you wanted milk in the morning and wine at lunch? Wouldn’t the flavors run into each other?”
“Just…shut up,” he told me.
At night I lie in bed and map out the territory I’ll cover the following day. The thing that holds me back is maintenance, retracing my steps and spot-cleaning the stretches of road I’d covered the previous afternoon and the afternoon before that. What did my life consist of before this? I wonder. Surely there was something I was devoted to?
With the arrival of warm weather, it became a bit easier to live in the stable. Three old friends visited from the United States, one in July and two more in August. “Want to pick up rubbish on the sides of the road?” I asked.
And all of them answered, “Sure. That sounds fun!”
I felt like the Horsham District Council should have given them something, a free tour of the Arundel Castle, maybe. It’s the local government’s responsibility to clear away the trash, but in order to maintain all the roads, they’d need a crew of hundreds. And until people change their behavior, how much can they actually accomplish?
“I’m not judging, but do you ever throw litter from your cars?” I asked the men working on our house. They all told me no, and I said, “Really, you can be honest with me.”
I asked the cashier at the local shop, the owner of the tearoom, the butcher. “No,” they all told me. “Never.”
I find a half-empty box of doughnuts and imagine it flung from the dimpled hand of a dieter, wailing, “Get this away from me.” Perhaps the jumbo beer cans and empty bottles of booze are tossed for a similar reason. It’s about denial, I tell myself, or, no, it’s about anger, for isn’t every piece of litter a way of saying “fuck you”?
In trying to make sense of it all, I create a weak-willed weight watcher, an alcoholic, an antisocial teenager, but the biggest litterer I ever knew was my Greek grandmother, who died in 1976. That woman would throw anything out a car window. Her only criteria was that it fit.
“What the hell are you doing?” my father used to shout, and it would take her a moment to figure out what he was referring to. Farting? No. Throwing a paper grocery bag out onto the highway? What was wrong with that? The important thing to Yiayiá wasn’t a clean outside but a clean inside. A tidy station wagon reflected upon you personally, while a tidy landscape, what was that? Look at the sky, littered with clouds, or the beach trashed with shells. How was that mess any different from a hundred cans in a ditch?
My grandmother didn’t drive, but if she had, there’d be no end to the garbage trail she might have left. It doesn’t take many people to muck up a roadside. A devoted handful can do the trick. One of the things I find repeatedly is a plastic Diet Coke bottle containing a meticulously folded Mars bar wrapper. I imagine this is someone’s after-work snack and that by putting the wrapper inside the empty bottle, the person feels he’s done his bit. And though he has turned two pieces of trash into one, until he learns to keep it in his car, I don’t think he’s entitled to pat himself on the back. Who are you? I wondered the first and third and fifth time I came across one of these stuffed bottles. Do you think about the four hundred years it will take for this to decompose, or is this as inconsequential to you as flushing a toilet?
“What the government needs to do is take a sample of everyone’s DNA,” I said. “Then, when a bottle or can is discovered on the ground, we just run a test on the spout and throw the person in jail.”
“What if they’ve poured it into a glass?” Hugh asked.
And I said, “Why do you have to make this so difficult?”
It’s pathetic, really. Here we are, recent immigrants thinking that everything will be perfect once we fundamentally change the people who were actually born and raised here. I tell myself that it’s possible sometimes, though deep down I suspect it’s just rubbish.
Day In, Day Out
Seven is truly a wonderful age. For two days. That’s the length of time my friend Pam and her son, Tyler, who is in the second grade, normally visit. He’s at the stage where whatever I do, he wants to do. This includes wearing button-down shirts; singing “Galveston”—a song made popular by Glen Campbell—until everyone begs you to please, for the love of God, stop; and carrying a small Europa-brand reporter’s notebook. I gave him one the last time he came to the house in West Sussex, and, aping me, he stuck it in his pocket alongside a pen. That afternoon Hugh drove us to the nearby town of Arundel to tour its castle. There was an issue of the local paper in the backseat of the car, and leafing through it on our way there, I came upon a headline that read, “Dangerous Olives Could Be on Sale.”
“Hmm,” I said, and I copied it into my little notebook.
Tyler did the same but with less conviction. “Why are we doing this again?”
“It’s for your diary,” I explained. “You jot things down during the day, then tomorrow morning you flesh them out.”
“But why?” he asked. “What’s the point?”
That’s a question I’ve asked myself every day since September 5, 1977. I hadn’t known on September 4 that the following afternoon I would start keeping a diary, or that it would consume me for the next thirty-five years and counting. It wasn’t something I’d been putting off, but once I began, I knew that I had to keep doing it. I knew as well that what I
was writing was not a journal but an old-fashioned, girlish, Keep-Out-This-Means-You diary. Often the terms are used interchangeably, though I’ve never understood why. Both have the word “day” at their root, but a journal, in my opinion, is a repository of ideas—your brain on the page. A diary, by contrast, is your heart. As for “journaling,” a verb that cropped up at around the same time as “scrapbooking,” that just means you’re spooky and have way too much time on your hands.
A few things have changed since that first entry in 1977, but I’ve never wavered in my devotion, skipping, on average, maybe one or two days a year. It’s not that I think my life is important or that future generations might care to know that on June 6, 2009, a woman with a deaf, drug-addicted mother-in-law taught me to say “I need you to stop being an asshole” in sign language. Perhaps it just feeds into my compulsive nature, the need to do the exact same thing at the exact same time every morning. Some diary sessions are longer than others, but the length has more to do with my mood than with what’s been going on. I met Gene Hackman once and wrote three hundred words about it. Six weeks later I watched a centipede attack and kill a worm and filled two pages. And I really like Gene Hackman.
In the beginning I wrote my diary on the backs of paper place mats. My friend Ronnie and I were hitchhiking up the West Coast at the time. I was mailing regular letters and postcards to my friends back home, but because I had no fixed address, no one could answer them. And so I began writing to myself. Those first several years are hard to reread, not because they’re boring—a diary is fully licensed to be boring—but because the writing is so horribly affected. It’s poetry written by someone who’s never read any poetry but seems to think its key is
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