The first time I heard someone use the term “fly-tipping” I genuinely had no idea what they were describing. From goofball American movies I knew about cow-tipping, but even if it were possible to catch a fly and hold it steady, where is the fun in pushing it on to its side, and why would doing such a thing be considered anti-social? Or maybe fly-tipping was the unauthorised giving of gratuities, though again, in what circumstances or establishments could it constitute a criminal offence? But to see fly-tipping, or rather the result of it, is to recognise it immediately, usually because of the haste in which a car boot or the back of a van has been voided of its contents. Objects are strewn in an unholy mess by drivers wanting to make a quick getaway, and the resulting ugliness compounds an ugly crime. Don’t expect fly-tippers to hang around stacking their unwanted junk in tidy piles.
I’m sure fly-tipping is rife in urban settings, and some urban settings are indistinguishable from rubbish dumps or landfill sites in the first place. But it’s most conspicuous in areas often referred to as the countryside, a place where I happen to live, and which I define as a border region between the built environment of towns and cities and the truly wild spaces of the moors and hills – the Pennines in my case. The countryside lends itself to fly-tipping because most humans are pretty lazy, and the first green field or cart track beyond their own postcode is usually identified as the most convenient waste disposal site.
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