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adads - if you had acutally had a conversation with Mr Trebus (RIP) at his home in Crouch Hill; and you had heard what he said about what he had been through in his life, then maybe you wouldn't be so patronising in the tone of your pompous comments. Mr Trebus done well considering what he went through many years ago in his past.
I just assume that you are ignorant of what Mr Trebus went through in his life adgs or I doubt you would be making these comments now.
Trebus was born in northern Poland, where his father, Francicszek, was station master in the small town of Ostrowo, outside Gdansk. The family lived in a house near the railway. It was a peaceful existence, brought to an abrupt end when Edmund's father fell to his death through the ice of a frozen lake.
This personal tragedy was followed by global calamity when, on September 1 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. The Nazis justified this act of aggression by saying they were returning German-speaking Poles to the fatherland. In fact, like their neighbours, the Trebus family preferred to speak Pomeranian Polish, something which earned Edmund a beating from German soldiers.
The details of Edmund's war experiences, as he related them, were confused. He made repeated mention of being imprisoned and mistreated - years later, as his London garden was being forcibly cleared, he likened local council officials to the Nazis. He also took great exception to being described as a tank driver; he was, he retorted, a tank commander.
Army records show that Trebus did, indeed, serve with the 1st Carpathian anti-tank regiment of the Polish Free Forces in Italy, in 1945. He had joined as a corporal cadet after being captured while serving with the German army in France. Like many German-speaking Poles, he had been forcibly conscripted by the Nazis.
After the war, Trebus joined the Polish resettlement programme, then moved to London, where he married and had five children. The family moved to Crouch End in the early 1960s, and it was there that he first became a serious collector. At first, his obsession took the form of mild eccentricity. He filled the upstairs rooms of his four-storey Victorian house with the spoils of hunts through local builders' skips and junk shops. One room was packed with vacuum cleaners, another with cameras. Trebus bought every recording he could find by Elvis Presley.
As time passed and his children moved out, the collections piled one on top of the other, like sedimentary layers, until each room was full to the ceiling. Trebus would push a small cart around the streets of Crouch End, gathering discarded building materials, which he carefully arranged in the garden, doors in one corner, windows in another. There were washing machines, wood, motorcycles and bicycles. There was even one of musician Dave Stewart's old synthesisers, retrieved from the back of his recording studio. Like all the objects, it came to be forgotten about and covered up over time.
Trebus's neighbours remained on surprisingly good terms with him, while, at the same time, making vociferous complaints to Haringey council about the growing health risk from the rats which infested house and garden. His wife used to sit in her deck chair on a patch of grass, surrounded on all sides by a growing mountain of junk. In 1981, she left - and he covered that patch too.
By 1998, Trebus was reduced to living in a small corner of his kitchen, surrounded by newspapers and children's toys, with only his Jack Russell terrier for company. The garden was so full of junk that he needed ladders to get in and out of his house.
After years of legal wrangling, Haringey council decided to act. When its clearance team erected scaffolding, Edmund, then aged 80, climbed up with a pair of mole grips and tugged at the bolts holding it together. He was arrested, and the contractors moved in. Freed from the cells several hours later, he returned to argue, with wit and infuriating logic, about the value of almost every item in the 515 cubic yards of rubbish they removed.
Trebus welcomed the BBC, believing that the presence of cameras offered him a measure of protection. This relationship continued, and, on October 13, the BBC film Mr Trebus: A Life Of Grime, will be shown. Last year, Trebus gave up fighting and moved to Haringey council's Trentfield residential care home to spend his final days in peace.
· Edmund Trebus, born November 11 1918; died September 29 2002
"No offense" - as the south african lady on the perfume counter says in the fast show comedy sketch - after she says something offensive - so good that lady with south african accent in fast show -
Well, not quite.
Diary of a Nobody From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Diary of a Nobody, an English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon, first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 – 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892. It is considered a classic work of humour and has never been out of print.
The diary is the fictitious record of fifteen months in the life of Mr. Charles Pooter, a middle aged city clerk of lower middle-class status but significant social aspirations, living in the fictional 'Brickfield Terrace' in Upper Holloway which was then a typical suburb of the impecuniously respectable kind. Other characters include his wife Carrie (Caroline), his son Lupin, his friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing, and Lupin's unsuitable fiancée, Daisy Mutlar.
The humour derives from Pooter's unconscious gaffes and self-importance, as well as the snubs he receives from those he considers socially inferior, such as tradesmen. In The Diary of a Nobody the Grossmiths create an accurate if amusing record of the manners, customs and experiences of the Londoners of the late Victorian era.
The book has spawned the word "Pooterish" to describe a tendency to take oneself excessively seriously.[1][2]
Pooter is mentioned in John Betjeman's poem about Wembley.
Anne McElvoy writes this, today, in the Evening Standard
30 Mar 2011
An envelope with the word "Compulsory" in bossy black type lands on the mat. What now? Has the Revenue run out of patience? Is the repo man en route?
It turns out to be Islington council's charm offensive on "compulsory recycling". Not content with us sorting our rubbish into two lots to recycle, we are brusquely informed that from April 4, recycling food waste will be mandatory and that a visit from an "officer" will follow if we do not oblige.
"We all have an obligation to recycle as much to save money that can be spent on important Islington services," intones the website. I don't know who is doing the obliging here, but this ukase comes with as little consultation as the average Kremlin directive and about the same tone of voice. No real consultation, no alternatives, no incentives - just a "do as you're told". The strident voice of the self-righteous town hall telling its citizens how to live is clear as a bell.
Food waste is messy and unpopular. The technology of it is primitive: sloppy brown bucket in the kitchen attracting fruit flies and other interested creepy-crawlies, coupled with even bigger sloppy and unsightly bin on the doorstep emitting smells for a week while the council get round to picking it up. The "we" who it claims have an "obligation" to recycle food in the way that it dictates are in fact not required to do anything of the sort.
If the council truly intends to use its powers (questionable legitimacy here) under Section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, it deserves the backlash it will most certainly get from reasonable people.
It is not up to a local authority to demand that we behave in a certain way because its budgets are being tightened. Neither does it take an oversensitive ear to perceive the politics of grievance masquerading as environmental concern.
Islington, says the website, is home to many low-paid people (true). "To protect your services we need to save money by recycling." What does the sentence mean? That the services will be threatened if we don't fill up the slop box appropriately?
Or that this is a moral duty bound up with concern for the poor? It is, like so much local authority communication, an illogical, ill-argued document topped off with a whip-cracking threat of a penalty if we don't agree.
"Don't worry," breezes the leaflet. "We're not trying to catch anyone out." In which case, how can it be compulsory and prominently announced as such? Recycling advisers can "issue fines" if people are "deliberately not recycling" and our "rubbish bins may be visually inspected". It sounds pretty much like a catching-out exercise to me. But not recycling food waste is not illegal and it is cynical of the council to present its case as if it were.
Yes, people are susceptible to rational argument about the environment. They might even by persuaded to engage in the thoroughly unpleasant business of food waste recycling - not that there is any evidence the borough is trying to make this any easier for residents.
The very best way to turn us into a resistance force is to treat us as simpletons to be bossed and threatened. Let's tell them that, if the officer comes to call.
Granted, the example of parking enforcement since that became a council matter does not bode well. But if a different directorate with a different attitude are in charge of recycling enforcement, it need not necessarily go the same way.
I don't believe in God,but I imagine most of the people on this forum do believe,judging by the style of some of their comments so a capital G incase he does exist.I wrote incase "he exists" because God would be a bloke there is no way God would be a bird.Because then God might get a "time of the month moment" and say send a thunder bolt down to wipe out Tottenham.On second thoughts,maybe that would be a good thing. A female God would not be right though.
No need to feel stupid Sophie just because you recycle your food.
I like the fact that Mr Trebus called Haringey Council a bunch of Nazis and they couldn't tell him he was over reacting as he had been captured by Nazis himself,so had first hand experience. Good man.
I am not saying Sophie's house defintiely smells of a combination of fish and eggs and other rotten food,I am just saying that we can't be sure that it doesn't,best not to make assumptions.
carry on
adgs- on a religous theme - JC was a hippy so respec but...
Jesus was a chippy, had a good job and a good solid trade as a carpenter,but he gave it all up to become long term unemployed,he grew his hair long and wandered around palestine with his mates wearing sandals and saying that he was the "son of God".He didnt like sunday trading so he went down to the local market and smashed it up,and he claimed he could "walk on water and turn water into wine". If the local paper reported that a " long haired,long term unemployed man had smashed up Chapel Market on Sunday Morning" - would people still be worshiping that man 2000 years later or would he be arrested and given a fine?
carry on