They had been full, full, full, and now it is so lovely to be empty, to be so full of potential and not the leavings of people’s lives. It is spring – that month that comes in like a lamb and takes its leave with a vicious swipe of its lion’s paw – and when the super-charged, storm-force wind catches them, they get a tornado that no weather-map had predicted, funnelling them higher and higher over the town and away. They are light, and then they are free.
On they fly, calling to one another in alarm and joy. From this height they can see the cherry trees in bloom, the white, the pink, the pale-pink flowers beautiful from this distance and not the dirty snow of the petals on the ground. What a view, what freedom. No longer would they squat obediently in back gardens and down the side-alleys like tethered pets. No longer would they accept any old rubbish dumped angrily into them with a snap of their lid. No longer. They have done their time lurking between the broken flowerpots and rusted bicycles, they have had their fill of carrot peels and bottle tops and unrecycled beer cans. Enough of torn up love letters, used condoms, empty packages and pills. Uneaten meals and broken crockery, damp tissues and despair. Enough, enough, enough. But how will their families manage without them?
And are they missed? On the news, ‘And finally, one viewer caught this clip of the tornado that sent bins sky high over Leicester.’ Nothing more.
Later on, there are reports of them falling softly to earth. Somewhere they’re not recognised; somewhere that spring holds more gently in its warm hands. They able to slip into the life of the place once they find their feet. They become part of the local work force, some of them, intermarry with the locals. They walk on cooling sand by the sea at the end of another hot day, where they call out to each other, over the sound of the waves, and say how nice it is to be clean and empty on an evening like this, and not smelling of fish guts, lemon peel and sadness.
