Dedicated Followers of Fashion

I’m tortured by the bin in my local churchyard. It’s an elegant black bin that declares its use “Litter” and its location “St Mary Magdalene Gardens” in gilt lettering; its aesthetic merit harmonising with its functional principle: the beauty of the church grounds. Well, it did, until the labellers descended. The labellers have stuck two A4 signs on the bin, one reading, “If this bin is full” and continuing in now illegibly washed-out print with guidance for the litter-heavy and weak of mind. The other threatens a fine for dog fouling. Of course, the bin is always full, since the money that should be spent on emptying it has been pocketed by the labellers for their printing receipts. These vandals are trash, but they see themselves as superior to those that collect it, because they’re paid more.

The humourless surplus of the bureaucratic machine once relied on their stickers fading and a budget to replace them. Since squatting unchallenged over the public square, they marched off in all directions, conquering the halls of academia and infiltrating the ranks of the Carnabetian Army, marking everyone until the marked themselves signalled defeat with a revised automatic signature.

Inevitably the labellers now label the last of the anti-labelling, anti-whatever-they-labelled, as if criticising a hat trick of first-half own goals makes you anti-women’s-football (I am, but for different reasons). It’s a peculiarly female energy, this hysteria, and it’s exhausting, because in matters of the cloth the labellers are as fickle as can be, switching flags like they change their frilly pants, and crying you’re anti [insert here] because you didn’t like their banner, even though they coloured it in themselves, and wore matching lipstick while they waved it.

I try to avoid these dedicated followers of fashion and the social media skip they fill with their new cause, their new prefix, and their new selfie. But maybe the fault lies with me and my ilk, who ignore or employ their shorthand for a peaceful life. It’s time to be frank. The bureaucratic banshee’s kink is flattery, the only way to end their rise is to label their dogshit, ‘dogshit’, every time you see it.