Move To A City Where Hippies Run Wild

May 20, 2006 · 4 minute read

fly-tipping
noun Also written fly tipping or flytipping (Environment)

In the UK: unauthorized dumping of rubbish on the streets or on unoccupied ground.

Etymology: Formed by compounding. The fly- part is probably ultimately derived from the verb to fly (the culprits tip and fly); it is the equivalent of fly-posting (a term which dates back to the early years of this century) except that it involves dumping rubbish rather than putting up posters. Since the thirties, street salesmen have called their unlicensed pitches fly-pitches, but this name is probably derived from the adjective fly, 'clever'.

History and Usage: The term fly-tipping has been used in technical sources to do with waste disposal since at least the late sixties. A topical problem in the Britain of the eighties, fly-tipping was the subject of tighter legislation in 1989 to try to tidy up city streets and give the UK a greener image. The term fly-tipping has also been applied to the dumping of toxic waste in other countries. Fly-tip has been back-formed as the verb corresponding to the noun fly-tipping; individuals or bodies who do it are fly-tippers.

If you look at the Cowley Road at the right angle, you can still see the 1960s; square, utilitarian buildings decaying, rotting, clinging on to life. They have survived. And they’re not going anywhere, a reminder of an inescapable past.

Or: standing alone at a concert lead you to depressing avenues of thought. Especially if you haven’t been to one by yourself for a while. All the old worries come back, last time magnified by the huge number of indie girls straight out of a Belle & Sebastian fanclub meeting (and every other one sporting an American accent). And again, the islands of despair in the venue centred on us poor unfortunates that are attending alone. You look at the others with pity and revulsion; you’d go and talk to them, but you can’t quite shake off the feeling that they’re actually disturbed serial killers ready to pounce on their next victim. Now, this may sound harsh, but I assure you, they’re thinking exactly the same thing about you. And thus we remain lonely during the deadly parts of the evening where there’s no music.

But, oh, the music. Now, I haven’t been listening to Sleater-Kinney a lot recently, and I wasn’t too taken with The Woods, so I was wondering how much I’d enjoy last night. A silly question. Still amazing. Still one of the greatest rock acts around (yay hyperbole!) Capable of slaughtering all of the current UK ‘rock revolution’ in under one minute and forty-nine seconds, before waking up early and heading off to All Tomorrow’s Parties. Carrie Brownstein owned the stage all night long; her hair long, drenched in sweat, obscuring her face, flinging her guitar at impossible angles, and making sure there were no fly-tippers in the audience. Because you have to have standards. Janet! Oh, Janet Weiss, how we love your drumming and harmonica bits! And lovely Corin, who now reminds me of Mandy in Missouri and North Carolina; funny as ever, and oooh, that voice!

The set drew mostly on The Woods, but that wasn’t a bad thing; in fact, as soon as I got back home, I listened to the album again, and I discovered that I’d treated it rather harshly last year. Other songs came from All Hands On The Bad One, Dig Me Out, and One Beat (The Hot Rock sadly absent, but then I know it’s one of their less popular albums (fools! It’s great!)). The concert had to finish at 10:30, which was a bit of a shame (at Carolina, it’d only just be getting started then!), but on the other hand, they packed a lot into the time they had.

Easily the best concert I’ve seen in Oxford. Not as good as the Cat’s Cradle performance in 2002, but then I think that was a confluence of events; one month after the first anniversary of ⁹⁄₁₁, a nation being dragged into war, a night of music with a political edge, and I had an exam first thing the next morning. I couldn’t hear properly out of my left ear until well into the afternoon. Ah, good times.

And I stand by my assertion that Carrie smiled at me after catching her eye during Words & Guitar. Nothing you say can convince me otherwise…