8. Who can blame them?

In the early days, back in the 2020s/2021s, we had a run of people caught short in the parish, but - blessed by the availability of hedges and the invisibility of being Nowhere, and by the foresight to carry loo paper -  took care of the problem and carried on.

A little later into the 2020s someone with a small child with a disastrous tummy issue pulled over just before Amy-the-dog's house at the edge of the village, and took advantage of a small run of ditch to semi-hide a mass of poop-entangled tissue. As litter-pickers we took all of this out of the environment, as a matter of course and as a public and environmental health matter. If you and other creatures can get serious diseases from dog and cat and other animal leavings, just imagine...

But we're less keen now, and reported the latest roadside nappy on the Tewkesbury Borough Council portal (see Number 7 in this series - no, not Number 2, Number 7.) But they don't do nappies. And really no one else does. So the plastic, and the shreddings, and the leavings left behind by anxious-to-get-somewhere parents take on an after-life, in places we cycle and ride, on verges where we walk, in the woods, across the footpath, and in the fields where crops grow.

 6 June 2024: On the move

 6 June 2024: Broken up and semi-buried by in-fill; beginning to spread.