Recycling

It’s become all the rage round our way. Cardboard, plastic, tins, paper, glass, food leftovers… even those containers that fruit juice and chopped tomatoes come in – what do we now call tinned tomatoes? After the initial resistance and confusion (the council had to employ a batallion of agency staff and hire extra switchboards to cope with all the calls from disgruntled or bewildered members of the public), most people seem to have accepted the changes and dutifully separate their recyclable waste into the correct depository for weekly collection, while remembering to only put out their black bags for collection fortnightly. I suppose it’s all to the good, although part of me can’t help wondering if we’re locking the stable door long after the horse has been recycled into a tube of glue.

While we consumers are being converted to the recycling revolution late in the day, others have been recycling for years. Take record producers. How many times have you heard a song on the radio and started to sing along before realising it’s not the same version as the one you know and love? When the song finishes and the DJ mentions the artist, your reaction is, “Who?” Turns out to be the winner of some reality show you’ve vaguely heard of and might even have watched once, or a version of it, when such shows were just starting out and had the novelty factor (if not the X factor).

And what about films? Just think for a moment of how many films they’ve remade in recent years, for no reason that I can see other than in the hope of making a fast buck. Ones that spring to my mind: The Omen, King Kong (twice), The Parent Trap, The Poseidon Adventure, Planet of the Apes, The 39 Steps (at least twice, more counting TV versions). It wouldn’t be so bad if the remakes somehow improved on the original, but they rarely do in my experience.

There are, of course, exceptions, particularly in music. I love Kelly Osborne’s grungy version of Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach and Wheatus’s version of Erasure’s A Little Respect. But I’m struggling to name a film whose remake I prefer.

So, I can see the point of recycling when it comes to household waste, but music and films? Hmm… I’m not convinced, unless it’s to give the older generations an undeserved reputation for being hip.

The day that Madonna released her version of American Pie, my daughters regarded me with new-found respect as I absent-mindedly sang along – how could their fusty dad be so up to date with the music scene as to know the words to Madonna’s latest song? Little did they know that I was singing the Don McLean version.