The turd on the street - Ben McCormick July 2004

“Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham.” So sang Smiths lead singer Morrissey in the late eighties as the emergence of dance culture contrived to consign him to the pop history books. Had the now-reinvented crooner lived in Toulouse, the refrain might have been somewhat different.

For, instead of the panic that stalks the streets of provincial towns in England, it’s turd that ruins the rues of Toulouse. It’s not Leeds side-streets that I’m slipping down these days, but the main boulevards, alleyways and pavements of this otherwise delightful south western French city. The stuff is everywhere. From great steaming piles of cack left by Madame LaMerde’s Irish Wolfhound to small but perfectly formed ‘pavement cookies’ baked in the hot afternoon sun, the walkways of La Ville Rose are teeming with faeces of all shapes and sizes.

It doesn’t seem to bother the locals much. They quite happily perform acrobatic, slalom-like manoeuvres to avoid treading in the muck as they go about their daily business, if you’ll pardon the pun. And frankly, pooper-scoopers are a non-starter in a country which prides itself on how ‘dignified’ its citizens look. Dignified? Not when they’re skating across a freshly laid and unseen dog-pat, they’re not.

Perhaps the most tricky stuff to avoid is the trod-in-shit, that long streak of brown with a shoe-like imprint in it that stretches at least a foot away from the point of impact. In itself, it’s an easy obstacle to spot, but up ahead lie oft-hidden ‘aftershocks’ that can easily catch the pedestrian unawares. And it’s no fun tramping shit-stained shoes all over your new friends white shag-pile carpet.

I suppose it’s an attitude thing. The local authority really needs to embark on an in-depth education programme to alter people’s dog-walking habits and win over their hearts and minds. They’d need a catchy slogan, such as: “Don’t soil the party” or simply “Stop letting your dog shit on the pavement”. Or even go to the extent of imposing fines like they do in London. Given your average French person’s attitude to parking fines, however, this would likely be a fruitless exercise.

The main problem is that people just don’t care. The local authorities clean the streets twice a day and hose down the pavements every day at 5am (not that I’ve ever heard them do that or anything), so there’s really no need to be conscientious.

No, in this case, cure is much more likely to work than prevention. We need small, water-filled troughs by the side of the road in which to wash off the detritus - a ‘turd bath’, if you will. Perhaps they’d have little brushes by the side of them to help remove caked-on bits of chid from tread or insole? Or maybe they could employ some of the many homeless people to gouge out the crap from your shoes with a stick? Or even dog shit detectors lining the pavements that issue a call of ‘Mind the crap’ every time you come close to standing in some.

Or perhaps the pedestrian needs to start fighting back? Disgruntled street walkers could form an underground, anti-fouling action group that runs around dressed in full combat gear and balaclavas shouting “merde, merde” and pointing at the offender every time they see someone letting their dog lay cable on the pavement, maybe publicly ridiculing them with mime, or something. Perhaps these ‘shite knights’ could scoop up the offending mess and rub it into the owners shoes to draw their attention to the plight of other pavement users.

Failing that, we could always embrace the squit-stained sole as a high-fashion statement.

“Merde? C’est la mode.”