A tale of almost ordinary folk where snobbery and survival meet in the back streets of Oxford beneath the dreaming spires over the burning issue of rubbish…or who’s using whom?

North Oxford is a curious place where innocence and guile live cheek by jowl. The large dwellings were built mostly for college dons and colonial governors in Victorian times and now house probably more Nobel Prize winners per square mile than any other part of Britain. But out on the streets, cagey and canny characters are reviewing the situation every minute of the day with one eye cocked on the big chance to pick a packet or two.

These worlds don’t intersect all that often, but rubbish is one area where they collide. It’s a great leveller that shades the boundaries of the places inhabited by people with too much and people with too little, because recycling is a space where they can use each other.

I was walking to a summer lunch meeting at the Cherwell Boathouse among the Victorian houses off Norham Gardens near the Dragon School – a national institution where the great and the greater send their children, the future rulers of the country. It was bin collection day but by noon the pavements were all tidy and well swept and the bins had already been whisked out of sight behind the high hedges in the back gardens. So the green plastic children’s toy box sitting discretely near a front wall attracted my attention.

I wandered over to inspect. Carefully adhered to the rim was a small sheet of paper – “Is there anyone that we could persuade to make good use of this slightly large but lovingly and organically grown marrow? Carrier bag provided for your convenience.”

Inside was a massive thing about 15 inches long with a circumference of, say, four inches and weighting about seven pounds. But it was the carrier bag that convinced me to help these North Oxford residents. This was not flimsy plastic, but a super strength and double sized ‘bag for life’ from the Co-op. So I did my bit for recycling and walked off with the giant marrow.

On the main artery of North Oxford, Banbury Road in Summertown, I bumped into Dorothy Dexter, wife of Inspector Morse author Colin, and told her about helping this poor family find a home for their garden surplus.

“Oh, Bill, people like you are so valuable!” she said in her deadpan manner.

“Our house was built in the 1930s and the garage was made for cars of that time – the Austin A-8 – not modern cars. So Colin is very careful when he drives into this narrow cocoon. He has to squeeze between the side walls and stop before he hits my bike which I always park at the back. One day he went too far. I heard this huge crash. My bike was bent out of shape.”

So what was the connection between a seven pound marrow, my value and her broken bike, I wondered? Dorothy Dexter explained that she and Colin dragged the bicycle a whole mile down the Banbury Road to the cycle shop. The mechanic sucked in his breath through his teeth, shook his head and told them this sit-up-and-beg bicycle was beyond repair. The frame was split. Would they like to buy something a little more modern than this antique?

Dorothy loved her bike and wanted to give it a proper send-off, so she asked the mechanic if he could dispose of it. The owner made it clear that he did not run a junk shop and he would be grateful if they could take this rubbish away now.

“We dragged it a mile back home and I asked Colin ‘what are we going to do?’ The council will charge if we ring them, and we’ll have all the palaver of arranging dates. They probably won’t come for a month anyway.”

Colin immediately had the answer: “Take the lock off and put it outside the front gate.”

“I removed the bell. It had such a lovely sound. I couldn’t bear to lose that. Within a half hour it was gone. Of course the bicycle did have two perfectly good wheels. But I felt a bit guilty because with that frame, if anyone tried to ride it the bicycle could be something of a death trap.”

So she did have a niggle, but she was very keen to put that in context.

“The people opposite on the Banbury Road put out a wing backed sitting room chair with a slightly faded William Morris cover. The thing did list a little to the left and it wasn’t all that comfortable when I sat on it; but the chair disappeared – gone from the footpath in 45 minutes.

“The owners of the corner house had tenants and they chucked out a 1970s three piece suite with a large brown chequered pattern which probably didn’t have a fire retardant certificate. They carefully arranged it in a nice ensemble setting on the pavement. I was surprised they put so much effort into it. Maybe they had jumped through the hoops and were waiting for the council to collect, but you’d think they would put it in their front lawn. Anyway that was gone within the hour.

So Dorothy and Colin Dexter did it. Their neighbours did it. Everyone, it seemed, put out old purchases for conspicuous consumption in the hopes that others would salivate and steal.

“I suppose anywhere else it would be called dumping and we would never get away with it; but because of people like you, Bill, North Oxford rubbish doesn’t remain on the roadside long enough to qualify for fly tipping.”