‘Middle-class fly-tipping’ is a force for good – so why are people being punished?

I still look back fondly on the first ever piece of furniture I found on the street. Well, technically it was my ex-partner who did the finding; he returned home to our flat one day practically fizzing with excitement. “I’ve just seen a table on the street!” he proclaimed, his voice tinged with childlike wonder.

“I think it’s free to take...

” I didn’t need telling twice. We were both in our twenties at the time and perpetually skint. The one-bed flat we rented together came furnished with a sofa, bed, and built-in wardrobe – but no table.

Meals were eaten on laps; inviting friends round for dinner was, quite literally, off the table. This discovery was going to transform our lives. We were going to become the sort of couple that “entertained”.

We raced back to where he’d found this miracle item a couple of streets away and it was even better in person. Able to fold down to just the mid-section or extend to a half or full table, it was just right for our dinky open-plan kitchen/living room area. The only downside was that the previous owner had decided, in their infinite wisdom, to paint it gold.

But even that anomaly became part of the story. We carefully carried our new find home and spent a memorable Sunday stripping it down, sanding it and lovingly revarnishing the original wood till it gleamed – we who had never done a stroke of DIY in our lives. Whenever someone came round to the flat, we proudly referred to it as our “Street Table”, as if we .