Where the Streets are Paved With Brown

 My brother was over just before Christmas. It was lovely to see him. He lives in a village called Sherfield on Loddon, a leafy little slice of English idyll. The village hall is called The Village Hall, the village shop is called The Shop, the village Post Office is called The Post Office, like it was branded by P.I.L. in 1986. There's a duck pond, some fields and three pubs, and that's about it. It is as green and pleasant as land gets and, because of this, dog walkers come from miles around to breathe in the fresh air and nod at each other in their Northface jackets. 

So he was surprised when he came to Belfast. 

"Why is there so much dog shit?" he said. 

"Is there?" 

"There's dog shit all over the pavements. People come to my village to walk their dogs but they pick up after themselves."

"After the dogs." 

"After the dogs, yeah."

I know what you're thinking: toffee-nosed English bloke comes to Belfast and starts finding fault. But no, he loved it here. He thought it was great in every other aspect. I took him to Castlereagh Tesco the week before Christmas and he was a lot more forgiving about than I was. He was just confused by all the dog shit. And I remembered something: when I first arrived in Belfast I noticed there was shit everywhere too. 

I went to the Post Office today, the nearest one, in King's Square. I had to send a drawing of Charles Dickens to Spain, fairly obviously. It was the first time I'd been out of the house since New Years Day, having succumbed to flu DJing at a hotel. It's easily done. I never leave the house. The only person I ever see is Susan. My immune system is weak, because I'm not regularly ingesting other people's fizzy poisons. I'm still deaf in my left ear and bit shivery and awful, but it was good to get outside for a short walk. The post office is about ten minutes away which was eminently doable even in my weakened state. I headed off and spent a whopping £15 to send an envelope to Spain which still won't get there for a week. Amazing. 

There were plenty of poos on the way to the shop, so I decided to count them on the way home. Keep looking at the stars, John. I had a system: those shits that were dried out and desiccated, I didn't count. Likewise those poos that had been eroded to a mere outline, like the chalk circle round a dead body - a ghost shit - I did not include. Only turds that were injurious to the heel, to the tread of the shoe were included in my tally. However, if the dog had dropped off two or three eggs in a single sitting, at intervals,  I counted those as two or three as they represented two or three threats to my innocent desert boots. With this in mind, I began to count to individual dog turds I met on my return from the post office. Bearing in mind it's a ten minute walk, can you guess how many I met? 

29. 

29 individual shit lumps in ten minutes. That would be busy on the trottoirs de Paris during poodle season, but on the King's Road, Gilnahirk? And, by the way, that's just on one side of the road. If I crossed over, that would be a whole other nest of dog eggs. I can't do even basic maths - as I've just found out, attempting to work out how many poos that is per minute - but it seems like a lot. Why? Why do people just let their dogs shit everywhere? Why is nothing done or said? I must say, I've never seen anyone do this. If I'm walking about I see people laboriously putting on their gloves, inverting their plastic bags for the grab, in stilted slow motion. Again, they say with their rolling eyes, their shrugging shoulders, it's like opening a sluice gate with this good boy, yes it is, yes it is. But it must be play acting. Because someone is allowing their dog to pepper the pavements with walnut whips. Presumably quite a lot of someones, unless this is a single dog with a varied diet and wild weight fluctuation. 

Three! I worked it out. Three poos a minute. I was walking at 3ppm. 

In my book, Fine, I blamed this phenomenon on the elderly, because I imagined they'd be unlikely to pick up after little rover if there was a strong possibility they might never straighten up again. But now I'm not so sure. I don't know that I can pin this on any one demographic group. I think they're all at it, the dirty faecal scofflaws, seeing me coming, giving me a sad nod, holding the plastic bag in their hands and then, as soon as I'm gone, sticking the bag back in their pocket and walking away whistling, little Benji with his shitty arse in tow. 

It can't be pleasant, picking up after a dog's bum. But what's equally unpleasant is treading in Fido's mess. It's winter. It's dark at four in the afternoon. Cars park on the pavements, throwing thick black shadows under the lamplight. There has been snow. Anything could be hidden under that. It's not fair on the unsuspecting pedestrian i.e. me. You get up at the crack of dawn to walk your dog, you feed it and pet it, rub it's tummy, it might sleep on the sofa or at the foot of the bed. It costs you a fortune in food, in insurance, in vet bills. You worry about the dear little thing. Your dog. But you don't care enough about your fellow man to pick up its shit from the street where it shits. You're everything wrong with society.