Electric House

On the front of what used to be Electric House there exists a disabled lift.  It was installed in the days when electricity had a much higher profile to raise those who were disabled but also needed to enter this nerve centre of the national grid up to the same level as their service provider.  

However, electricity has moved on so the electric lift no longer needs to move up and down to allow the disabled to ascend the three steps between them and their utility provider. 

Uswitch having pulled the plug on the exterior disabled lift it has in recent years become a sorry sight.  A memorial to lost power.

Like most of those brutally and suddenly made redundant by the unpredictable caprices of the commodity markets the lift has of late had a career change.  It has gone into the refuse business.  It now collects refuse.  All kinds of refuse…. But mainly empty cans and bottles and McDonald bags.  Items presumably discarded by the general public on their way to the Whitgift Centre. 

Why these people don’t just use an actual rubbish bin when there are some not 20ft away I cannot say but it interests me as a metaphor for human nature. 

What the people who deposit this rubbish are doing is in some way trying to be tidy and yet at the same time they are creating litter.  Moreover the pile of rubbish 3 feet high that they have collectively deposited is too deep to be the work of one person … unless it is a fly tip and I doubt that because why would you fly tip takeaways and plastic bottles?  It makes no sense.  Then again most littering doesn’t.

Still it is odd because I am sure this pile hasn’t appeared overnight – it has definitely grown organically over several months.  Odd that people should be so tidy and yet untidy at the same time…?

One wonders too if people are attracted to the lift because they think one day it will move again or they want to press the button to make it move.  The lift of course will never move again.  Electric House has long been an ugly redundant place.  Its huge blanked out plate glass windows have for years been causing people to hurry by it as fast as possible so as not to ever really see it.  Perhaps this is Electric House house crying out for help.  Desperately trying to get noticed at any cost?

Is this both the best and worst of the human spirit?

Or is it just rubbish?