Old mattresses are notoriously hard to recycle – the charities won’t take them because it’s illegal to resell them, and who wants to inherit someone else’s lumpy, stained discarded bedding? Recently a number of these items have been turning up on Marrickville kerbs, bearing inscriptions. Here’s one that I’ve had the presence of mind to preserve for posterity, or at least for the internet. Appropriately enough, it’s leaning against the Shepherd Street fence of Marrickville Public School:
In case you can’t see the image, the words on the mattress are:
1 owner
54 cycles
6 lovers
and a baby boy
As I was taking the photo, a young man stopped and said, ‘There’s only one possible response: If you were single I’d take you home with me.’
gosh
Oh they’re witty, those Marrickville people!
Sent from my iPhone
I love the ‘and’ in the last line – also the absence of stains on the mattress after all those fluid, producing events.
Marrickville Council takes old mattresses, I love the poem but it wouldn’t have been hard for the owner to ring the Council rather than leave it in the street.
Maybe it’s a bit of both, Kathy – they rang the Council and put the poem out in the street as an ephemeral offering. If so, I’m glad the Council held off long enough for me to go back and take a photo.