View Point - Novelty Items

Protect the environment: Please re-use this bag," reads the slogan on the plastic carriers provided by Spinneys for customers' shopping. The suggestion is a good one. Plastic is a scourge to the environment when it gets loose. Bags wash up on shore, become trapped in trees and bushes and litter the streets.

And re-using a plastic bag is easy.  You can take it back to the shop time and again rather than being issued with a new one. You can keep one handy in a pocket, should you be caught in a sudden rainstorm and have need of an attractive improvised waterproof hat or pair of galoshes. If you have a small four-legged pet, a plastic bag makes a delightful raincoat, (and is much more economical than the knitted variation on offer in the boutiques). 

Should you own a bicycle, you can cover the seat with the bag – why? I have no idea, but look at the bicycles around Dubai and you'll note that many have this very design adaptation. Clothes, books, shoes, glass, paper can all be recycled.  Waiting for his moment, prostrate in a drawer of the cupboard, is our own testament to recycling – an exceedingly grumpy Santa Claus bought in India earlier this year and constructed entirely of papier mache. 

So, empty yoghurt pots can be planted with herbs, and cardboard boxes transformed into play forts for children, while plastic products can be mulched up and reformed as multi-coloured tables and uncomfortable angular chairs for their discerning parents. One particularly innovative London-based designer even constructs groovy cupboards out of old washing-machine drums. The possibilities are endless.

Just think of the stereotypical retired man spending his days building a model of the Taj Mahal, for example, out of used matchsticks: if that isn't a supreme example of recycling, then I don't know what is. Well, actually I do, namely the marketing ploy of Max Power Aerospace, an American company. These entrepreneurs have spotted a gap in the market. For the man or woman who has everything, why not buy a former Boeing 727 and have it fitted out as your private residence?

The sales blurb is tempting: "This 727 is retrofitted to be a magnificent home for the unique individual who not only has a sense of adventure, but knows how to live." Don't worry about air sickness. The engines are removed and the aeroplanes fixed to the ground on eight-metre-high steel columns.

When a gentle breeze kicks up, the aeroplane will rotate hypnotically through 360 degrees. Even during hurricanes, "your home smoothly changes direction, pointing into the wind". On the wings, rails are fitted so that the proud owners may sit outside and admire the view.  Those of a more nervous disposition should be assured by the company's firm guarantee that "the aircraft will no longer fly."

Would that this metamorphosis could work the other way round.  If someone would only recycle the villa where we live into the luxurious Concorde, I doubt that I would ever stop travelling.