The Hanging Gardens of Crappylon

Someone has hung some little bags of dogshit along the fence near our house.

At first when I saw it I couldn't believe it. I actually said to myself, "I can't believe it."

I showed Mrs B. "I can't believe it," she said.

Little packets of dog poo, all arranged in a line with an insanely obsessive neatness.

For a moment it occurred to me that it might be a work of Modern Art. I imagined a minibus turning up full of Turner Prize judges, come to peer at some dog excrement and marvel at it's power and post-modern poignancy. But that thought soon evaporated and I remembered that things like that don't happen in real life - only in the lonely corridors of my deranged imagination.

So I could only conclude that this was a work, not of art, but of madness. It was the product of a mind that had been twisted, probably by an early potty-training trauma, and which now was driven by the urge to display excrement in a public place.

I took a photo of the poop and Mrs B emailed it to the council, asking for it to be removed.

The man from the council was very nice and explained that the phenomenon was not art or insanity, but a political statement. Apparently these poo creations are being constructed by disgruntled dog owners as a protest against a lack of poo bins. Their attitude seems to be: "We are going to the trouble of picking up our dog's crap - the least the council can do is provide bins for us to put it in."

Personally, I come from the "It's your dog and your shit, and you can damn well take it home with you so my council tax can be spent on something more important" school of thought.

How can these ruddy people think they've got the moral high ground? They expect the rest of us to pay for them to have bins installed and emptied regularly, just so they don't have to carry their dogshit home and put it in the bin. Anyone would think they are doing us a favour by picking it up in the first place.

Anyway, the man from the council explained that he couldn't get the crap removed because it's on private land.

Its removal is the responsibility of the land-owner, David Wilson Homes, who, despite it being directly opposite their sales office, do not see an artistic arrangement of shit-filled plastic bags hanging from a fence as an obstacle to selling houses.

They have agreed, however, to put up a sign. I don't know what this sign will say. Maybe it will be one of those little information signs you get next to paintings in art galleries: Dogshit in Plastic, Anonymous, 2010. A poignant comment about local government's reluctance to pander to the whims of arse-lazy dog owners.

OK. I admit that it's better than not picking it up at all. When I was a kid you couldn't walk down the street without having to dodge dog poo every few feet. That's why we learned hopscotch at school - it wasn't so much a game as a necessary life skill.

But the bins only exist to make easier something that dog owners should be doing in the first place. They're not an integral part of a dog owner's human rights. They're not something you can really protest about - like a lack of police presence or the slow response of ambulances. And a lack of them certainly doesn't mean it's ok to dangle poo from a fence.

If I'd wanted to look out of my window and see a row of little shits hanging from a fence, I'd have bought a house opposite a school.

Oh, look, they've made me go all right-wing now. This happens more and more with the onset of middle-age. The next thing I'll be constructing a gun turret on my roof and writing to the Telegraph. I'd better go and meditate or something. Bye for now.