I thought that Edward Finch’s was just another routine enquiry.

But I didn’t know how wrong I could be.

TWO

‘There is nothing new under the sun,’ he announced. ‘Everything comes from somewhere else. Even plastic started off as crude oil or natural gas or coal.’

Dodge is prone to saying things that sound like quotations. Sometimes they are. More often they’re his own thoughts. I’d a feeling that, though his last remarks started with a biblical quotation, the rest was pure Dodge. Not too much about plastic in the Bible.

His real name’s Gervaise, though I’ve never heard anyone call him that. In fact, I’ve rarely heard anyone call him anything. Dodge has a somewhat reclusive personality and I’ve only seen him with other people in a work context. I think he likes me, though he’s never put it into words. Eight years – more than eight years now – we’ve been working together, and he’s never once looked me in the face.

My nickname for him, Dodge, came from Diogenes, the Athenian philosopher whose rejection of consumerism was so strong that it’s unfair the way his name has been misapplied in the literature of hoarding. ‘Diogenes Syndrome’ is used to describe a condition also known as ‘senile squalor syndrome’, where the elderly surround themselves with rubbish. Most unjust to Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a large ceramic jar and, very responsibly, kept his possessions to the absolute minimum.

Dodge, though, conforms more accurately to the philosopher’s model. Following a private education and a highly lucrative job in the City (from which he retains upper-crust vowels), he suffered some kind of breakdown, the full details of which I have never been told. All I do know is that he emerged from the experience as an enemy of consumerism and a champion of recycling. He has a whole house near the village of Walberton which is full of items he is going to repurpose. And if that sounds like the definition of a hoarder, let me tell you everything there is neatly stacked and catalogued. And, what’s more, Dodge does eventually find a way to transform every bit of it into something useful.

He runs a company – of which he is the sole staff member – called ‘Treasures Upon Earth’. Its byline is: ‘All of your rubbish has a value to someone.’

I was lucky enough to make contact with him, just randomly through an ad in a local free newspaper, soon after I’d started SpaceWoman. It had quickly become clear that I was going to need a reliable ‘man with a van’ to transport a lot of the clutter I was clearing out of my clients’ homes, and Dodge could not have been a more perfect fit for me. Back then, I had assumed most of the household debris would go straight to the dump, but I hadn’t reckoned with Dodge’s ingenuity and transformational skills.

Which is why I was driving with him that Monday morning in his 1951 Morris Commercial CV9/40 Tipper, a vehicle he maintains with a devotion that almost amounts to worship. And our mission was supplying furniture which Dodge had lovingly constructed from old wooden pallets.