The Rubbish Ball

It started with some gum that was chewed by an obnoxious girl in Ware. Where? In Ware, I could go on, but I won’t. The chewing gum was spat onto some chip shop paper that was left by a hairy faced man with paint on his jeans. The wind blew up, and it flew in the air, the way rubbish does. There was quite a funny moment when it  flew straight into the face of an old woman. Her tartan shopping trolley fell over, and when she shrugged the paper off, she didn’t realise her Fixodent false teeth glue had failed its sales pitch and her teeth blew away with the paper and gum.

As the dental glue spread itself over the paper, more and more was added to it. Paper clips and cigarette buts were quickly hoovered up, as was the lose change that the magpies had forgotten. Its initial flapping had given way to a more concerted roll, it tumbling along, knocking over toddlers and pregnant women who hadn’t seen their feet in months. Its size had reached the size of an over weight pumpkin, and it was starting to show some quite menacing characteristics. It seemed it was using the spin of the earth and pull of the moon to move itself, whilst picking up used syringes from nasty junkies and razor blades discarded by wasteful barbers. Fortunately some safety was to come in the shape of concrete…the safety was obviously relative. The ball of rubbish rolled into a nicely, recently laid, moist patch of the stuff which smoothed it all out, covering the protruding needles and slashing blades. It slowed for a while, trundling along.

Children had heard of this ball, and when it would come to their village or town, they would kick and push it. An internet site had sprung up, children could track its progress, and many thought of different things they would lay in its path. Soon, people were putting all manner of things in front of it, some which were smashed, and some which were to become part of it. Someone, quite early on, was clever enough to cover it in treacle, which although initially slowing the ball, helped to grow it. It was now the size of a bus shelter, covered in stuff like patio furniture, feathers, mattresses, three budgies, one member of a cult, sixteen bibles and 479 shoes.

The news was slow to pick up on this phenomenon, but when the 24 hour rubbish cam was started, it grew into a country-wide event. Some overly enthusiastic 20-something heart-throb and heart-throbette presented hourly bulletins on a dedicated channel, as people thought of all ways to exploit this. Coca-Cola were the first to realise it, and hired a Forest Fire helicopter to drop a huge amount of coke on the ball. This did two things, showed how wasteful the company was, but also how sticky their coke was. People started to worry about the states of their insides! International news channels sought to be the first to have ball cam, many pioneered ways in which to have a indestructible camera on the ball, digitally showing the destruction that was now following this juggernaut. DVDs of best of moments, bloopers and multi-angled views were released. You could pick up good pirate copies down at the market.

It was a sad day, in more ways than one, when the ball claimed its first life. Now the size of a two storey semi-detached house in Edgware, the ball killed a young investment banker who lived with his widow mother.

“Country’s Rubbish killed my Son” the Daily Mail yelled, and the rest of the country sort of agreed (first time for everything). A petition was started and politicians argued and debated, referendums came and went, but nothing seemed to get done. People argued until they were blue in the face.

The ball was oblivious to all of this and was now composed of something from each household in the country. It was now the size of Suffolk, twice as interesting, and had come to a gentle, rocking stop in a valley up in the north. It was grinding the hills away, while the country slowly got more and more bored with the whole thing. Eventually it was decided that the only way to deal with the problem was to go to war. They set out battle plans, and as the ball continued it’s gentle (well as gently as a giant ball of rubbish could) ebb and flow, a series of massive bombs were dropped on it. The chemical balance of this fetid sphere of shite made it highly explosive, which resulted in the coast line changing as half of Lancashire was obliterated. And as the rubbish rained down all over this fair isle, everyone thought,

‘How could we have been caught up in this madness?’ Unfortunately, whilst channel surfing they found a programme about the first bearded mouse to be made professor of Maths at Cambridge and it all sort of started again.

- Anand

- illustration by the amazing Shaun Tan