In the last week two things have happened in the last week that suggest to me my neighbourhood is in decline.

Earlier this week I walked out of my front door only to notice across the road in the childrens park/play area were a small number of caravans, a few dogs and some makeshift washing lines. Lovely!

Luckily, within a few days they had been moved on.

This afternoon on returning home I noticed a friends car parked near my place which may not seem unusual but I wasn’t expecting them and I hadn’t seen them for some time.

Turns out they were actually visiting a house near mine because it belonged to their mother and within 1 week of her renting it out, it had been turned into a cannabis factory!

It’s now going to cost her £1000 to put the electrical wiring back as it should be because the would-be botanists had spliced into the mains.

The Royal Mail recently attempted to post an item to me that was too large to fit through the letter box. I don’t actually recall hearing the doorbell, I just found one of those little red notes on my doormat telling me someone had tried to deliver a package.

I happened to notice the opening times had changed at my local collection depot to what first of all seemed like more sensible times.

They used to be open during more or less office hours and they are now open from 6am to 12pm then from 5pm to 7pm. 

Seems logical because people can pick their undelivered post up on the way to work or on the way home.

The only problem is, in the previous brief windows of opportunity the place used to get absolutely mobbed with people queuing out of the door and across the car park.

More people are likely to try and pick up their mail on the way home than bright and early in the morning which leaves just 2hrs between 5pm and 7pm. It’s going to be bedlam.

The place always seems short staffed, no one ever answers the phone and items of post are often ‘misplaced’.

This is a sure indication of the continued decline of the Royal Mail and it’s only going to get worse.

The Royal Mail has just lost the Amazon delivery contract worth £8million/year and staff are currently considering a strike over pay and working conditions.

It doesn’t look good.

I live in Southampton, UK. It’s not a small city and collectively we must produce tons of waste every hour and yet when I asked my local council for a glass bin (a plastic box some councils provide for people to put their glass in which gets taken away on a specific day and recycled. There have even been NATIONAL adverts about them and the benefits of glass recycling) I was told ‘we don’t provide them in Southampton’.

Seriously?? What’s worse is the council representative even told me I could just put my glass in the non-recyclable bin. Naturally I asked if glass would still be sorted and recycled if I did this and I was told ‘No’.

So why would I do that? Why, when there is talk of people being fined for not recycling correctly, are councils encouraging this?

Seems to me that the only way to recycle my glass properly is to take it to the nearest bottle bank and do it myself. I don’t mind, the sound of breaking glass is good for the soul!

In my opinion, as far as being responsible for recycling is concerned, anyone that has the time and the inclination is a good place to start.

And if we are all honest with ourselves, given a choice of two bins (one for recyclable and the other for non-recyclable), who doesn’t have the time to do their bit? If you had two bins, you would have to be an idiot to intentionally put rubbish in the wrong bin.

I may speak strongly on this matter but we’ve only got one planet to choose from so if this one spirals into an environmental catastrophe, where are you going to move to? Are you going to hop on the nearest space ship and fly off to colonize a new world?

The pressure is on and if you watch too many documentaries you could be misled into believing it’s already to late… That being the case, what’s the point in trying to fix it…? But you don’t know for sure. You don’t have all the answers so why take a chance?

It’s like smoking. If you knew 100% that the next cigarette would be the one that gives you fatal lung cancer, would you smoke it?

Think about the ‘The Butterfly Affect’? The phrase is taken from a famous short story by Ray Bradbury (A Sound of Thunder) about time travellers  going back in time to hunt dinosaurs that are just about to die from natural causes (so no disruption to what was going to happen anyway) The hunters move along an ‘anti-gravity’ path so they don’t affect their surroundings.

One hunter gets delusional and strays from the path. When the hunters return to their own time the entire world has changed and only then does the wandering time traveller discover a dead butterfly in the sole of his shoe…..

The actions of one can affect the lives of many. (It’s not just a corny movie catchphrase, it’s been proven throughout history!)

With this in mind, we are all responsible and we all must take action. It may mean we have to do even more with our already precious time. It may mean we have to make a little more effort and spend a few more minutes on our feet each day but if you think about it seriously, the pro outweighs the con by a massive margin. Doesn’t it.

If you try, noone can EVER say you didn’t…….