The idea of guerilla goodness is good, as long as you are careful not to cause trouble by cleaning up what people do not want clean up, or what turn out to be acts of random officiousness and senseless acts of interference. However, if you are fired by the real spirit, you won't do annoying 'I'm better than you' things.
George always takes two plastic bags when walking in the park, to collect rubbish in one, and recyclable bottles in the other. We look like the drunkest in the street when the bottle collection is on.
Sometimes I carry a duster in a plastic bag with me, to clean windows of bus shelters and railway stations, and wipe grafitti where it is wipeable.
Anthony Marrian writes (adapted from a letter to the Guardian, Feb. 18th '93):
With crime inexorably on the rise, with images of violence and pornography hurled at us from out TV and cinema screeens and our newsagents, with drugs as available on the streets as if from a department store, why does nobody say enough is enough?
It is not the government's fault, it is our fault. These things can only happen with the people's consent and acquiescence. I believe that the people are heartily fed up with it. We have to create a fashion of goodness; we have to put innocence and joy back into lives and we have to start doing something about it now.
I urge readers to write to me at PO Box 378, 2 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3DQ, in order that, together, we may begin to turn back the tide that flows against out common humanity.
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