Trapped in a Plastic Bag Shop
by Daniel Guy Somewhere along a row of tatty shops near the industrial zone, there’s a place that sells nothing but plastic bags. You can pick up every kind of plastic bag you want, anything from large mattress covers, to the little plastic pouches that drug dealers use to sell their weed. It’s called Romford Packaging, and it’s a small, cramped, dusty shop, a dimly lit cavern of wooden shelves stacked with boxes of plastic bags, narrow corridors in between, and the floor is littered with discarded plastic, bits of tape and card. At the back is a desk piled high with bills and order forms and a dirty yellow phone buried beneath. Beside it a dented grey metal filing cabinet, a plastic waste paper bin filled with broken biros, old newspapers and the remnants of a Chinese takeaway. Around it the cracked and flaking nicotine walls are peppered with old post it notes, newspaper cuttings, postcards, price lists and a saucy calendar. That’s where you’ll find Jake, six days a