Natalie wrote:

We had a very eccentric old Polish man living round the corner to us
who collected rubbish; stored it both inside and outside his very
large house. This was such a problem that they made a television
programme about him. The council cleared all the rubbish from his
garden and as soon as they finished he started collecting again. He
died last year...

I watched every programme featuring that poor man, including the recent one
after his death. I felt his biggest 'problem', if you can call it that, was
not his garden but his mental health problems and yet no one took that into
account (that was certainly the impression given by the programmes although
it could of course have been different in reality). The council's attempt
at getting him to clear his rubbish was as dictotorial as the Germans had
been to him during the war. The collecting of rubbish and other things was
an subconscious attempt to regain control of his life and retain things
rather than have them forcibly taken away. Rather than help this poor man
they actually made his troubles worse. Rather than eccentric, a better
description of this man would be mentally ill. Of course, I don't doubt
that his habits caused problems for his neighbours and I wouldn't want to
live near it either but it's just a shame that people didn't see the man
amongst the rubbish.

Jaqy