Is Mallow Manky?

9th Jan 2008

Is Mallow Manky?
Finnbarr Barry

You may have been horrified to hear this week's reports from the Irish Businesses Against Litter group that a Cork town features among the worst litter black spots in the 26 counties. Long due a bit of good news, following significant job cuts over the last few years, Mallow received another blow on Monday morning that it was now considered a virtual dump along with disgusting cesspits Tallaght, Sligo and a place called Nenagh - allegedly a small hamlet in Tipperary.

Paved area outside Market Square	Pizza Hut: no gank evident

The association of a Cork town being associated with any area in Dirty Dublin set alarm bells ringing at the Peoples Republic of Cork control and command centre and the PROC's Sanitation Control Team was immediately dispatched dressed in protective clothing, face mask and scythe to cut through the mounds of thrash heaping up on the streets of manky Mallow. Fermoy won the top prize last year so it had seemed like Cork was leading the way until last Monday.

Nice setting yards from the main Street	Clean as a whistle

Such was the cutting nature of the damning press release that the Peoples Republic of Cork team had been received last rites from a member of the clergy as, like those cleanup workers at Chernobyl, it was expected in the face of such filth that many of the team would not return alive.

Clock tower: a bita character like	A fountainy thing. All clear bar the moss.

Early Tuesday morning, before the town's Green Machine cleaner was launched, the PROC team descended on the town and liased with local agents. Terrifying images of chip wrapper swamps, airborne nappies blowing around in the wind and impenetrable walls of cider cans flashed through our minds.

Surely a report funded, ironically, by the Department of the Environment, Heritage & Local Government who give Cork County Council their cash, would be an accurate assessment of the vile urban setting it portrays.

Mallow's Main Street: A Clonakilty buzz	Paddy's looking well

NOT DIRTY?
Shockingly, Mallow is not that manky at all. Anyone who has ventured outside the People's Republic and visited hell holes like Tralee, Tramore or Thurles will know that these pits of despair make Mallow look like the grounds of a royal palace. If Mallow's main street was a hyper-clean hospital theatre the rest of these towns would be a murky cesspit of disease and desperation.

Unlike the mysterious report issued by IBAL (still not published in full on their site), we took photos to assure feens and beours across the county that Mallow isn't letting Cork down in the way that it is being portrayed in the national newspapers and on radio and TV. This is clearly an amateur attempt to try to turn decent Corkonians on each other - a move blatantly sanctioned by the Irish Government.

Hit and miss	Butts in the cracks

WALK ABOUT
After the PROC mission status was downgraded to a "code yellow" and all team members were scrubbed down and back in civilian clothing a walk-about was initiated to ascertain what conditions Mallowonians actually endure on their streets day-to-day.

Market Square is a new development in the town centre with Dunnes Stores as the main tenant and doesn't disappoint for a regional town known for many things before it's architectural beauty.

This greets visitors at the top of the town	Two examples of many

Neat, well maintained and most importantly spankingly clean the modern mixed-use complex is a decent place to pick up a coffee, do a bit of shopping and then attend an all-night rave in a swish apartment overhead. No dirt here.

Far from being a showpiece town, Mallow's town centre however isn't hugely unlike many other Cork towns like Clonakilty with most of the commercial activity taking place on one long narrow street. So was it filthy?

Sheds with Mallow Library (white) in the background	Junction near Seamus O'Keeffe Auctioneers

BUBBLES AND BUTTS
Most towns in the western world seem to suffer from the blight of bubble gum plastered into their pavements and pathways. Likewise, as if the damage to themselves wasn't enough, smokers, still bitter at being cast outside into the winter wilderness to enjoy a fag, retaliate by discarding their butts pretty much wherever they like - usually under our feet.

Mallow however must have the most smokers and gum chewers per head of population anywhere in the world. The average butt count outside non-public houses (shops, cafes, video stores, clothes shops etc) is worryingly high. Outside bars it's many times worse.

The infamous Green Machine cleaner	It missed this bit. Value for money?

GREEN MACHINE
The whirring of the giant street hoover met us about half way up the main street. A major problem for Mallow is that its poorly maintained footpaths are full of cracks and hollows into which smoker's butts roll and pile up.

We watched as it whizzed by and it appears that the machine can't suck up butts that are in the crevices below its wheels. A feen with a long manual "picker" and bag scooping up the butts by hand would be much more effective.

Park clearly hadn't been cleaned in weeks	An unidentifiable electrial applicance for the kids to play with

BOX IT OFF
As if those proud Mallowites needed more morning-after embarrassment, the town's cardboard consuming businesses had their boxes stacked outside their premises all morning - some, including restaurants and pubs, clearly from the night before.

While businesses are somewhat legally entitled to "put out" their rubbish for collection is it necessary to do so many hours before it is collected? Leaving stacks of cardboard outside many of the businesses on the main street leaves Mallow like a sitting duck for already biased rogues like IBAL.

Someone forgot their shopping	Must have been raining cans and bottles

THE PARK
Despite the knee jerk reaction of Mayor Noel O'Connor in defending his town there seems to be one area that has been horribly neglected in Mallow. The beautiful Blackwater/Avondhu Way which runs along the ancient riverside begins at the park next to Bishop Casey Memorial GAA grounds within view of a beautiful and well preserved arched bridge.

Embarrassingly, the park is littered with hundreds of cheap cider cans, crisp packets and plastic bags - albeit confined to the town end of the park where the majority of Mallow's teenaging "bushing" clearly takes place. All this in the view of Lidl, whose withering bags are scattered about the park like giant dying leaves.

Boy, those cameras were worth it!	Main street: worth little more than its name suggests

The reason the park is such a significant dent to the credibility of those coming to defend Mallow's litter record is because the area has been this way for months.

As many of the bags were faded from sunlight it's clear they have been in situ for weeks at the very least - furthermore with the recent cold and stormy weather no teenager would be desperate enough to seek such an inhospitable location to purge their lust for alcohol.

Footpath caked in gum	Public toilets more like a zoo cage

Despite these minor discrepancies Mallow is far from the sludge pit depicted in the national press but let's have a little more participation from private business instead of kid-in-the-cot moaning about the lack of local government action.

Waiting for cumbersome local authorities to fill out forms, pass motions, complete engineering reports and "action" tasks could be bypassed if the traders of Mallow dedicated two minutes to a sweeping brush every morning outside their premises. Quit the moaning, show some leadership and let's polish up one of Cork's best towns.

We'll be watching.