So, there I was enjoying a rather nice meal at this new, upmarket bistro just outside Sizewell, a much underestimated area but already with something a glowing reputation, when it all happened.
In burst a S.W.A.T. team, armoured to the gills and carrying more hardware than Rambo. The ‘Maitre D’ fainted, one woman screamed and I just sat there wondering if I would not have been better off wearing my brown trousers.
After what seemed like an eternity, the tension eased slightly as a man in a pink jogging suit, clipboard in hand, cautiously made his way through the cordon and approached my table.
‘This’, he said, wafting what looked like a glossy picture of a moonscape, ‘this is a satellite photo taken not ten minutes ago which clearly shows that during your first course, you did willfully discard upon the floor of this establishment a crumb of toast upon which was some form of paté’.
‘Duck’, I mumbled.
As he stretched himself to his full height again, the pink-clad official handed me a piece of paper and said. ‘that will be 75 pounds please’.
As we left the restaurant thinking that things couldn’t get any worse, some joyrider in a Chinook came whizzing past at rooftop level and blew my hat away. Probably on his way to Sandringham on a top secret military mission to liberate an ice cream or something.
Far fetched? Outrageous? 
Of course it is. Officials would never wear pink.
Sarah Davies picked up her four year old daughter Chloe from the nursery and headed home. On the way, both decided they were hungry and so Sarah bought a sausage roll for them to share.
Bending to give a piece to her daughter, a tiny morsel missed Chloe’s mouth and ended up on the pavement. Great result for a couple of passing pigeons ‘cos they scoffed the lot. Not great news for Sarah, though.
As they crossed the road, they were approached by two gentlemen wearing black tracksuit bottoms (not pink) who, having identified themselves as members of the Hull Environmental Crime Unit, said that they had witnessed her criminal behaviour and she would be fined 75 pounds by the Council for dropping litter.
Sarah went back to try and take a photo of this ‘litter’ but the pigeons had eaten all the evidence, not that it mattered to the officers. She was also threatened with arrest if she didn’t provide her name and address.
Litter is a problem everywhere, but there has to be some common sense applied, surely. There is a big difference between a small piece of food falling from the mouth of a toddler and someone ditching a polythene bag on the street. Another case involved a woman being taken to court for an apple core thrown from a car window. One man even got fined 75 pounds for dumping his litter in…..a rubbish bin! It was the ‘wrong day’.
Around 40,000 litter louts have been fined in the UK, and quite rightly, as local authorities introduce ‘zero tolerance’ policies, but reason has to prevail.
Spain has always suffered from a litter problem, illegal dumping or ‘fly-tipping’ being quite commonplace. Hence the armies of road cleaners employed in the municipalities and the daily collection of rubbish.
The most amazing part of it all is the fact that you can head off into the wilds and there, in the middle of nowhere and on a track barely even accessible by mountain goats with traction control, you will find such items as TV’s, fridges, washing machines and the like.
More so when you consider that in Nerja, for example, we have daily rubbish collection, a depot where you can take large items and dump them and a system whereby a simple phone call will get the authorities to come and collect those large household items free of charge. It must take an awful lot of effort to get those fridges up into the hills and parks.
The general attitude to litter was, for me, summed up last summer when I watched as a local workman took his lunch break. After finishing his snack, he carefully gathered up all the waste and put it in a plastic carrier bag. He then neatly tied the bag and got up from his chair. Things are looking up, I thought.
The man then walked straight past the litter bin almost right next to him and chucked the bag in the riverbed.
It is also noticeable that a fair number of foreigners seem to adopt this ‘chuck it anywhere’ attitude after even a short time in the country.
Interesting thought. If feeding a child can result in a fine for littering, the deliberate feeding of birds and animals must also qualify as a criminal offence!! Or does the bird get fined if it drops the food from its beak?