I'm not a plastic bag lady

An amazing thing happened this week. We ran out of plastic bags. At one point we had a fetid, ever expanding nest of the things, sweating away in the corner of a cupboard. Then Norwegian got a smart blue plastic bag holder from the Swedish shop (you know the one) and they were all tidied away. But it was still stuffed to capacity, spewing forth slippery paper thin bags at any opportunity.

We must stop using bags we agreed. As committed environmentalists it is the very least - if not only - thing we can do to halt the tide of rubbish that threatens to engulf the overburdened landfill sites around the capital. So we started bring our own bags to shops and saying, ‘no, no bag please’ – even as the autopilot shop keepers opened and started to fill their pristine new bag. ‘Just put everything here in my rucksack/pannier/hemp bag.’

But now after months of vigilant (and smugly) shunning of all these weak plastic receptacles, we have run out. '

With your admirable regime of hip hempness why, why,' you cry, 'do you need them?'

Well the kind men who come every Monday to collect our recycling have asked that we separate bottles from cardboard, plastics from paper. In fact they kindly will leave uncollected any unsorted recycling for us to reconsider during the following week. So every week we use 6 or 7 bags. Sure they get recycled but reuse is better than recycle as all green warriors are aware.

So what’s a green girl to do?

The sound of two hands slapping

I recently made a most remarkable discovery. Sherlock Holmes, had he been with me, would have been proud. If I had told Miss Marple about it later over a cup of tea, she would have patted me on the knee and said, 'Well done dear.' Heck, even Horatio Caine, might have taken me aside, raised his glasses squinting into the Florida sun and said, 'We need people like you on our team,' before running off to shoot a drug smuggler in the arse.

I'm doing a copywriting contract with a bonkers French company in a dingy 60s office block in west London. The ladies on our floor has one sink, one large blue plastic flower in a dusty vase, one stall and is decorated with shiny blue tiles. Every day last week, as I sat availing myself of the facilities, I stared at two very strange sets of hand prints on the wall in front of me. The sunlight streams in through the window behind me, lighting up the tiles and these smudges can be seen clearly.

For some reason, someone has repeatedly pressed both hands on the wall. They are small hand prints and as this is the ladies, I think it is safe to assume they belong to a woman. Could she have stood up quickly, felt faint and leant on the wall for a moment? But why then would there be a series of hand prints? Or was she slapping the wall over and over in despair? After working there for two weeks I can see that this is not outside the bounds of reality. Each time I leave, wash my hands and return to my desk, amid the shrieks of zut alor! and shouts of ecoute moi! I forget about them.

One evening the Norwegian and I watched Ray Mears and a bunch of San Bushmen following a rhino's trail through the dusty African bush. They found it helped if they imagined they were the rhino. The next day as I sat, I had a moment of absolute clarity. I imagined I was leaning against the wall. The prints glinting in the dull sunlight, suddenly came to life and I knew exactly how they had got there.

Never mind Usher and his romatic call to make love in de club. The owner of these prints and a willing friend had made love* in the office loos. Nice.

*or equivalent.