I've turned into a three headed monster. Yesterday morning I set off to work but I was stopped dead in my tracks by a newspaper lying on our path by the sidewalk. It was the JimmyBlog, one of those useless free daily newspapers which had been delivered to our house. Its never been delivered before. You pick up the paper at one of the numerous outlets round the city, if that's your cup of tea. I looked up and down the street. The paper was everywhere, on the sidewalk, on the lawn, not exactly hanging from the treetops, but you get the picture. Red rag to a bull or what? I fumed. This paper has a target audience aged six and 3/4 and we are not it.

I recycled the aforementioned litter on my way to work. Once in the office I looked up the name of the paper's distribution manager and sent him a polite e-mail describing the mess in the neighbourhood and stating that we did not want the paper delivered. There was no response. Free newspaper delivery was one of the main topics of conversation around the water cooler in the office. Some suggested mailing a whole pile of newspapers back to the paper, stamp free of course. Another was to approach Mr Jimmyblog directly as he works in the next building. Somehow I don't think they would allow me into his penthouse office suite.


This morning another paper was on the path, same place. Papers were on neighbours lawns, in the middle of the road, on the sidewalk, everywhere. There's an elderly lady a couple of doors down who never comes out the front door of her house as there are difficult steps. Lying on her path were two crumpled papers that she will never read, and she won't be able to pick them up. I grabbed one paper and brought it with me to the blogtrain station. Every day there are free newspaper distributors eager to hand you a copy as you enter the station. Often you have to run the gauntlet of jousting papers before you can actually get into the station. Today I gave JimmyBlog Distributor a paper before she could hand me one. And then, totally unfairly but I was steamed, I ranted about papers all over our street and asked what would be done about it. She shrugged and followed the Distributor's Rule 101 - do not engage in any confrontation with a crazy commuter.


Anyway I felt badly when I got on the train. Chewing someone out who is not to blame is not my thing. Still, I was mad. At work, I wrote again to the distribution manager detailing the worsening litter situation on our street and again asking for the paper delivery to be stopped, and demanding the courtesy of a reply. Finally later in the morning one of his minions wrote, apologizing for the mess, said they would clean it up and confirming they would not deliver it to our home. I thanked her. Now the problem is how I can prevent delivery of the newspaper to the entire neighbourhood, but I guess someone would suggest that is a suppression of rights, free speech or something. I'd prefer to save the trees.

I asked the distribution manager whether they intend to deliver on a daily basis to a large number of homes in the city but that question has so far gone unanswered. I imagine they are not keen to share their marketing strategy with the likes of me. They probably think I would take it straight to the local government. They would be dead right. But if the widespread daily goes ahaed, the other two freebies will probably follow, and the deteriorating litter situation will go off the scale.