Wednesday 12 January 2022

My introduction to Extinction Rebellion and Memories of The October 2019 Rebellion

I originally added my name to the main Extinction Rebellion website must have been around november 2018. At last something good was happening! Exciting!

I couldn't go to the April Rising in London and sadly missed seeing the gentle people coming together for the first time. It took me a while to find XR Chichester but when I did I was so relieved and delighted. Since the inaugural Heading for Extinction Talk in May 2019 my life seems to have been taken over, as I can see lots of others have too, by generally working towards raising awareness of the climate emergency and swelling our numbers. There's an almost tangible energy surge filling the air. A direction and focus that's full of urgency. Time is slipping through our fingers and nothing can slow it down.

The Rebellion that October served to even more deeply heighten and embed my passion for what we are all trying to do. In the months leading up to October I have had long, quiet moments of introspection and research. I have discovered for myself just how badly we were being deceived and duped by both big business and governments around the world. I had watched the climate crisis get worse and worse over the years but had never really honed down into individual scientist's papers and articles. It was clearly far too inconvenient, if not outright dangerous, for the powerful institutions to let us in on their secrets and to be honest, I question if they had even properly understood just how bad the situation is themselves, at least on government level.

In my view we should be doing everything possible to force the governments to carry out proper, in depth risk assessments on the time frame related to further deterioration of the deep ocean permafrost layers. No one has done this as a comprehensive study taking on board data from international research stations. Have a look at what Dr Peter Wadhams says in this video link. We have to listen to him. He is after all, an expert and has spent his entire academic life studying and observing this particular subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3L0R6LzEUE


For me the October Rebellion was joyful, invigorating, saddening, shocking, funny, exhausting on every level and above all inspiring. I watched as people who didn't know each other stepped up to hold a space and give each other  the strength to stand firm. Communities were formed and extended, sometimes in a flash as circumstances called.  I still can't quite believe that we took and held Whitehall for as long as we did. So close to Downing Street and yet we stood or sat shoulder to shoulder and refused to be intimidated by the police. If they had been like the Hong Kong police the story might have been different but maybe not.

I have a number of snap shot moments:

     The first time a policewoman politely asked me to just stand over there, on the other side of the barricade and being a generally polite and mild mannered person I started to do as she had so reasonably asked, until that is, a small determined young woman appeared at my elbow and whispered..."Don't do it. Stay where you are." I laughed and thanked her and took a few steps back in the direction I'd started to move away from. So easily I had complied. Not the next time though.

     Later that same day my daughter joined me. The police had very shoddily refused to let the disabled facilities be unloaded. They were showing that although they were largely tolerant they could be harsh and unnecessarily unfair in their treatment of the more diverse among us. We'd just started, as a group from the South East Region, to put up tents and make ready for the evening. Whitehall was being covered in a patchwork of pop up tents and bigger gazebos brightly hung about with bunting and XR flags and posters. In the distance the hubbub of Trafalgar Square could be heard. Somewhere the drummers were working their magic. Suddenly a snaking line of police men and women were determinedly marching into our midst, grim faced and resolute. They were heading to the gazebos as their first target. A number of them surrounded the bigger of the two nearest to us. The rebels had been laying down carpets and hanging little flags to adorn it's walls. To their distress the police encircled the structure and ordered them out. Then with serious faces each policeman or woman grabbed hold of the nearest part of the structure and looking rather comical and ridiculous they lifted the flimsy tent high above their heads and triumphantly carried it off to the side of the road. They dropped it there leaving one of their number on guard and turned to do the same again.
However as the crowd roared with delight we realised the drummers were coming and all of a sudden they swarmed through our number and as the police surrounded the gazebos the wonderful, deafeningly loud, synchronised beating of the drummers mirrored the positions of the police and made a circle around them. The police faced outwards and stood to attention as the sometimes smiling drummers stood no more than a couple of feet away from them, facing them and lead us all in chanting. Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion ....OY to be repeated again and again. One or two of the police were visibly moved. It must have been hard not to be. The rest of the tents stayed where they were that evening. The police had been faced down and so loudly and joyfully. My eyes fill with tears at the memory of how truth will be heard.





Perhaps the most joyful and fun Action for me was swarming with the drummers through the City. This time with my son Ed and  our Nikki holding on to the enormous road blocking XR banner. We set off down the tiny. winding lanes flanked by office buildings. Not great sky-scrappers but maybe up to four or five storey sometimes Georgian, Victorian or post-war buildings. Inside we could see the white shirted office employees distracted from their computer screens. We waved and smiled and for the most part they waved and smiled right back at us. The drums again worked their magic and we were loving interrupting business as usual. At every widening of the narrow paths we would hear the sharp penetrating blasts from the whistle of the drummers leader and they would form a circle to launch into the now familiar opportunity to chant again...Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion, Extinction.....Rebellion ....OY. Office workers were coming down into the streets, or at least huddle on the steps of their buildings to take photographs and do an occasional little participatory dance along with us. Only one kill joy hurled sticky water out of a third floor window at us. But even that wasn't enough to quell our elation and intention to spread our message to the chant of "Whose streets? Our streets" "What do we want? Climate Justice. When do we want it? Now"and "Power to the people. People got the Power....and "Get up, get down. Leave that oil in the ground" Just fantastic.



So what will 2020 bring. I suspect far more of us putting ourselves on the line but also with perhaps another dimension...a twist that remains to be revealed. But whatever it is we'll be there..EXTINCTION .....REBELLION!



Tuesday 29 October 2019

Cling, we are fading

I am lucky to live in the countryside, in a place I love, surrounded by woods and fields and ancient tracks. As I return from whatever travels the day has demanded up the lane that leads to my home, trees arch above my head and welcome me back unfailingly. The copse where we often walk the dogs is full of old trees, some cloaked in moss and many tipping at unnatural angles where strong south westerlies have pushed them from vertical over the years. Many of them have fallen and now provide complex ecosystems for all of the wildlife that bursts from their softened sinews. I can't help but imagine fairy folk peeping from between the tangles roots and hollowed out trunks. The outstretched roots of the tree in this photograph are to me a big green hand grasping at the earth...holding on, clinging.

How resilient is the noble tree and how willing to adapt. How giving.

As the Crisis continues to escalate and unfold, I spend more and more time exploring how to foster my own resilience. Not just on how to grow and store food, keep warm and physically do everything I can to enable my family and friends to survive but also on how to keep my heart and mind open, to be in and of the moment, to continue to nurture others and find a place for strangers at my table. The communities we gravitate towards will be increasingly important. There can be no more business as usual....for business will no longer be relevant. We are still for the moment anchored in the fossil fuelled reality of modern life but a transition is coming and how we relate to that will shape the future. 

I find myself reaching out, searching for deep ancestral memories. As I lie awake most nights, images of ancient, familiar faces project onto my eyelids. I wonder how these people lived and died. How there once was a time when we were profoundly connected to nature. There was no separation. We innately knew the seasons, the growing patterns, the cycles between birth and death. Every plant had a use and was more than just a flowering. Each wildflower held the secrets to a myriad of functions and different either household or medicinal purposes. Mysteries had been revealed to us long ago and now as we chose to ignore the truth they had so generously shared, they are once again held tight and are once again as secret as the night. It's up to us to knock and ask for the closed doors to be opened. To make the effort to see what is before us.

I am glad that I spent many years in the discipline of working as an architect. Painful as it often was. Understanding how to fit elements together, how to make a building warm and cosy with breathing materials and fresh air creating a healthy environment. The often confrontational and adversarial atmosphere of the building site has knocked off many of my own corners and taught me skills to at least try to resolve and not apportion blame but fix what is wrong as best one can and move on. To be part of a team is a privilege. Old brick layers can unlock mysteries if only they are asked. Equally the latest research into solar panels for example, can change the way things have been done for decades if not hundreds of years. 

"Cling we are fading" was one of the first pieces of art made by my son. It perches in my kitchen and reminds me everyday to be in the moment. To be aware and to breath gently.

Friday 29 April 2016

A walk in April with the asbos

Scrabble, Gata and Tata all a'twitch with exciting spring smells

Oil seed rape growing in the field behind us
The motorway outside our gate
Great view of the soft rolling Downs. In the distance is Lady Hamilton's Folly 
over the way from Uppark

Early May blossom always makes me think of poor Anne Boleyn


Cowslips nodding if not mooing a welcome by the gate



Bluebells ringing in Spring




A rather lovely little virginal bluebell all in white

An  early campion

I think this is a tiny little hardy geranium

Darling primroses




More shocking pink campions

Violets my grandmother's favourite little flower. Can't imagine why anyone would want to cover them in sugar and eat them..they are so pretty to look at.


This old ash tree is like a great hand coming out of the earth

Ahh lovely wild garlic...ramsons

I wonder what kind of fungi this is..looks like it would make a good black ink..so long as one didn't put the brush anywhere near one's mouth!! Ykk
They almost look as if they could crawl away!



This post is at the corner of our field


Deer slots in the claggy mud

May blossom

Baby camomile with what seems to be rabbit droppings by the side..

So love when the spring flowers start to bloom


Wednesday 7 October 2015

Puglian Paradise

Just beginning to feel better after the longest and most horrible virus infection..
So back to the keyboard but with lots of pictures!!!
 This is our trullo down in Puglia. You can just see me in the garage..for that is what the funny little bit on the end is supposed to be. We haven't been for a visit for around three years..if truth be told we haven't had any kind of a break for three years. Some times work just won't let you
 Me labouring in 2008

These two saints are inside our gatepost! St Damiano and St Cosimo patron saints of Puglia
.
Looking up into the stone dome of one of the cones..we have just started lime mortaring the joints..after sand blasting the old layers of earth plaster off.

This is where a little basin will sit with its own little window

 Our olive trees..we have around 200 some are ancient and so beautiful.

 When we can we cut off the suckers all around the base..they haven't been properly pruned for ages.
A stormy Puglian sky behind one of the cones.Sadly the weather can turn cold during the winter months.

You can see how this tree is in desperate need of a haircut. They are pruned to make them like an open box so that the sunshine gets right inside. This one is next to a mispora tree and in the foreground there is a pomegranate bush.



Orchids and wild flowers are in abundance.




 In the spring you can see such a wealth of wild flowers..beautiful.