What?
 The scariest ever approach to keeping Britain tidy.

When?
late 1980's - early 1990's

Why?
I'll level with you. Since the day I saw her, I've found Mrs. Baggit damn scary.

What happened?
 In 1988, Carrick County Council decided that they wanted a new character to remind people to take litter home, and keep the countryside tidy. Lacking inspiration, the council decided to open the floor to local school children. Perhaps inspired by the bogeyman under their bed, a five year old child named  Jenna Robbins unleashed a new horror upon the world...Mrs. Baggit was born. Mrs. Baggit was, essentially, a bin liner with a face. Not just any old face mind you, but a gurning, sneering, disjointed travesty of a face. Splodgy eyes boggled and leered above a squashed bat nose, and a lopsided, coprophagical mouth. The whole thing was rendered in the nastiest shade of brown in the paint box. Truly Mrs. Baggit was the stuff of nightmares. However, despite her many failings, the Council liked her enough to emblazon her across a fleet of signs, add a slogan - "MRS BAGGIT SAYS Please TAKE YOUR LITTER HOME" - and distribute them into laybys and tourist spots across Cornwall. I think I first saw her on a sign next to the marina laundry on Fish Strand Quay in Falmouth, not long after the venerable Keep Britain Tidy Man  joined my early cannon of obsessions.
Mrs. Baggit was very different to the Keep Britain Tidy Man though. Where he was a friendly, cheerful sort, she was a scary, threatening being. Keep Britain Tidy Man would gently remind, where Mrs. Baggit would force. Laybys in Cornwall always seem to be surrounded by thick, lush, dark undergrowth and dense woodland, and I could imagine Mrs. Baggit lurking there to trap the unwary. As a child, perhaps stopping for a picnic beside some quiet lane, I always uneasily checked the surroundings for signs of Mrs. Baggit. Yes, she was leering down from her sign, but what if she was lying, just out of sight, perhaps beneath  a nearby clump of urine smelling ivy? I could picture an errant toddler dropping a sweet wrapper or snotty tissue, and, while their parents were briefly looking the other way, suddenly being borne away into the bushes by a rustling, crackling, dustbin smelling monster. Mrs. Baggit would be filled with rage at their transgression, and her vengeance would be terrible. Brrr...even today it makes me shudder.
Fast forward to 2008. I wanted to complete the Baggit page, and I wanted to do the job properly, which meant confronting my demons and facing the spectre of Mrs. Baggit. But would she still be out there?
As fate would have it, I'd recently landed a job with a company in the South West (still working with my beloved sewage though), so I was actually quite well placed to find out. A few enquiries among my more broadminded colleagues gave me a few leads - someone thought there was a Mrs. Baggit sign on Holscombe Hill, just outside Bodmin. However, when she drove past the layby a few days later, Mrs. Baggit wasn't there. Various leads came and went, and in the end they all fizzled out. It seemed that nobody knew the whereabouts of Mrs. Baggit anymore. Lots of people in the office lived and worked in Cornwall, and some even remembered Mrs. Baggit. However, after months of looking, nobody had been able to turn her up. In April, 2008, I set off on an ill starred pilgrimage to find the Keep Britain Tidy Man. Being as that involved going to deepest Cornwall, I decided to keep an eye out for Mrs. Baggit on the way. I had no plan, no idea where to look, and, in all honesty, little hope of success. It felt as though Mrs. Baggit would be a frustrating obsession who would disappear into the ether without ever being closed. Nonetheless, as we travelled through the county, I kept my eyes peeled. One layby after another passed by, empty of all signs of Mrs. Baggit. Then, suddenly, about 10 miles Be afraidfrom our destination, something flashed by on the driver's side. Deb and I both saw it for now more than a fraction of a second, but it wasBe very very afraid enough. We looked at each other in astonishment. "Mrs. Baggit!" we exclaimed in unison. Spinning the car round in a gateway, I raced back up the road. And there she was. In all her goggly, pop-eyed, browny-orange glory, the creepiest obsession of them all boggled and slobbered at me like some malevolent village idiot. The layby wasn't as secluded as some, but she was just as disturbing as she'd ever been. To get a decent picture of the monster herself, I had to clean the sign, which had garnered a pretty reasonable crop of algae. As I squirted her with windscreen washer fluid and wiped her off with a cloth, something snagged at my hand, drawing blood. Was it the brambles surrounding the sign...or had the Baggit bitten me? A sudden chill ran down my spine. The eyes seemed to be following me round the layby. There was no traffic passing, and no birds sang. From the undergrowth came a stealthy rustle. A mouse? Or something much worse? Jumping back in the car, we left the layby to Mrs. Baggit, and drove off.

There's an interesting coda to the Mrs. Baggit obsession, which is that, shortly after I completed this page, I found that a recycling company named SITA were thinking of reviving the Evil One. In fact they were planning a competition to revive Mrs. Baggit in a new form - perhaps the local school kids could come up with some new horror to inflict on the populace of Cornwall? Well, sadly, I didn't get the message about this until 2008, about one year late, but that didn't stop me from coming up with a few new things for Mrs. Baggit to say. I think they're a lot more fitting.

Ate your dog Skin Last thing Too late to run Behind you Blood

If you have a favourite, get in touch and I'll send the favourite into SITA. No doubt they'll be pleased.

When Will it End?
 The obsession with Mrs. Baggit died away in the '80's, but she's still haunting me to this day.

Loose Ends
The following loose ends still remain. If you can answer them, please contact me.


Play Along at Home
Mrs. Baggit is still out there to be found, and, no doubt, to pray upon the unwary traveller, in other Cornish laybys. Take a drive round Cornwall for yourself, and, if she wants to find you, she will.