SUNDAY IN MEMORY LANE (Episode 41)

A new era begins...

The house in Harwich fell silent as if it was in mourning with me. I found it very difficult to stay there, but walking about without Rasta was aimless and depressing. I had no reason to stay in Harwich, I had very few friends there, but equally, I had no reason to be anywhere else in particular.

Meanwhile, Dan and Kim were living in Bournemouth. I had three grandchildren, Sherona, Thomas and a new baby, Aaron. Sadly, due to premature birth and oxygen deprivation, Thomas had been diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. Both Dan and Kim were exhausted due to sleepless nights and stress. They asked me to come for a visit to help out for a time and that seemed like a good idea.

As soon as I got there my time was filled with getting to know my grandchildren. They were boisterous and noisy, messy and amusing. Housework was something which got done around their fun and games. I spent a lot of time filling the washing machine, washing up and cooking. I felt useful and valued.

Just before Christmas, Dan announced that his Dad was coming to stay for a few days. I felt uneasy about it because Tony was so poorly by then that I did not think he should have been travelling anywhere at all. He had told me that he was taking a lot of morphine to cope with the pain. He was remarkably coherent considering that.

When he arrived his main focus was the grandchildren of course. On Christmas Eve Dan and Kim went for their first night out in years and Tony took the opportunity to tell me some news. He didn’t beat about the bush at all. He simply stated that he was dying. He made a point of requesting that I did not attend his funeral. He said that Lorraine would jump at the chance of getting blind drunk and humiliating me. Apparently she had no idea that he was spending his final Christmas with me. Ironic that, at the end of his life, I had become ‘the other woman’…. life is very strange.

To be honest I was quite relieved that I had the perfect excuse to avoid the whole business of dealing with Tony’s death.

For the first couple of months of 2013 I stayed with Dan and Kim, helping to look after my grandchildren. I began to look for suitable accommodation near them and was incredibly lucky to find a studio flat on the outskirts of Poole. It was in a small complex of modern flats for people over 55. It was immaculately decorated, quiet and convenient.

I moved in at the beginning of March but spent most of my days with Dan and his family. When Dan got word that his father had gone into the hospice for palliative care he took the whole family to stay in Clacton and spent as much time as he could with his Dad. While they were away I redecorated their lounge and cared for their cat who had just had kittens.

Tony died around 7pm on the 24th of May 2013, the day before Dan’s 41st birthday. I was sitting at my desk in front of a west facing window when the phone rang and Dan whispered that his father was gone. At that moment the clouds parted and a blinding beam of sunlight hit me in the eyes. It represented the beginning of a new era for me but I did not have a clue about that at the time. I allowed the tears of relief to flow, glad that Tony had finally escaped from the horrible pain he had suffered for so long.

That summer, the Bilderberg Group were scheduled to hold their latest top secret meeting at an exclusive hotel near Watford. I planned to be there. I hitched lifts from Dorset to Watford and had no specific plans to pull off any stunts but, as soon as I arrived, I could not help but explore the perimeter under cover of dusk. I attracted the attention of a helicopter and quickly hid myself in the nearby woods. I heard the pounding of feet and heavy breathing, so I hit the ground face down and several policemen raced past me, heading towards the spot where I had been previously. My long dark green raincoat had hidden me perfectly, so I casually walked away to find a spot where I could sleep.

The following day I was astounded to see that the Police were directing protesters into a small riverside field which had a very limited view of the Hotel’s drive entrance. That view was constantly blocked by banks of paparazzi, who desperately snapped photos of any vehicle which turned the corner. Otherwise the only view of the hotel was across the river at a considerable distance from the protesters.

Elsewhere in the field, it was boiling hot and there was some temporary panic when supplies of water ran dry. Throughout the day, more people arrived and there were speakers and some music. At the end of the evening, people were directed to go to a scout’s camp several miles away and that was especially peculiar. I had a feeling as if I was being herded and I could not remember ever having been to a protest quite like this before. It felt overly organised. I met up with an Irish political activist and we found an unlocked building at the scout’s camp with bedrooms, a kitchen, showers and classrooms. We spent the night there and, in the morning, headed back to the designated ‘protest area’ to hear David Icke and Alex Jones give their speeches.

My Irish friend decided, last thing on Sunday evening, to book a room at the nearby Hilton Hotel, he appeared nonplussed about the expense, which was highly unusual for an ‘activist’. We went for a meal at a Chinese restaurant and hung about in the Hotel lounge, people watching. I was struck by how many of the paparazzi were there, along with the security guards and the protest organisers from Bilderberg, all mingling and getting very drunk together. I noticed that Alex Jones and his huge entourage occupied one whole corridor on the ground floor and his grim-faced bodyguards were not allowing anyone else access to that part of the hotel.

We checked out of the Hilton on the Monday morning and took a train to Bournemouth where we picked up my car and drove to north Wales. I parked the car and we caught the ferry to Dublin. The idea was to spend a week in Ireland, sightseeing and working on a speech that my Irish friend was planning to give at a protest he was organising.

I arranged to be on the Hill of Uisneach at precisely the time that Tony’s funeral was happening in Clacton, Essex. I walked up there alone at first and had a very strange experience. I approached the sacred stones marking the navel of Ireland and heard a huge number of dogs barking excitedly. It went on and on, while I scoped the land in the valley below for a kennel or shelter of some sort. The noise was tremendous and I had to say aloud, “Well, hello!” and the yapping stopped immediately.

When my friend joined me at the top of the hill I asked him if there was a dog kennel nearby and he said, no it’s all farmland.

Image: Sculpture of Brighid, Goddess of Ireland on the Hill of Uisneach

I loved the little I saw of Ireland. It was magical. But, at the end of the week I caught the ferry back to north Wales and found my car just as I had left it. I drove the scenic route through Wales and took my time, stopping for lunch at a pub. It was a memorable holiday and a great way to send my final farewells to Tony who had always expressed some pride to have Irish blood in his family.

Social media was buzzing with news of a protest which had popped up in Sussex. I was very surprised to discover that an onshore oil well was proposed very close to Balcombe, a quiet rural village. It struck me as odd that I had never heard of the company, Cuadrilla.

They were planning to reach a suspected deposit, locked in deep shale and this would require a new drilling technique called fracking. I set about investigating this latest technological advance in fossil fuel extraction.
What I found out shocked me rigid.
They were planning to drill in the rural heart of the green belt and the stories I was seeing online from Pennsylvania were terrifying. Land was being polluted, wells contaminated, livestock was dying and the people were losing everything they had, just to escape from the multiple health hazards that had suddenly engulfed them.

I packed some basics into my car and drove to Balcombe to take part in the protest. It was easy enough to find, even though the Police had marked the approach road as closed. I ignored that and found a small group of people gathered around the gateway to a field.

At first I parked on the grass verge and watched. The first thing I noticed was a couple, standing on the other side of the road from the protest, with their arms folded and looking shifty. I recognised these people from the Bilderberg protest. Their demeanour smacked of undercover police and I watched them talk out of the corners of their mouths while keeping their eyes locked on the little gaggle of protesters at the gate. I greeted them as I passed by and they acted pleased to see me.

I struck up a conversation with a woman, about the same age as myself, who was beginning to prepare a meal from her living vehicle, parked at the side of the gate. I offered to help and that was how my summer as an anti-fracking protector began.

I set up my car with blankets covering the windows and a rudimentary bed in the rear. It was extremely basic, but the weather was so good that I spent my days and evenings outside, mainly helping others to get settled in, helping to set up a camp kitchen and organising donations of food and camping equipment. Every day more and more people arrived with supplies and tents. Before a fortnight had passed our kitchen was feeding over a hundred people twice a day and the grass verges were full of brightly coloured tents, happy people and children with the occasional dog. Greenpeace had supplied a couple of chemical toilets.

A small group of people arrived from Brighton and they decided to hold a camp meeting in an area they had furnished like a lounge room. They were highly motivated and resourceful people because, in no time at all, they had set up a Children’s Area and a large domed circus tent. The meeting was well attended and the agenda was to delegate responsibilities. People volunteered to build toilets, to set up a tea-tent separate from the kitchen, to supervise the children’s area, to hold meditations in the evenings, to create signage and banners.

It was agreed that I should become the site treasurer, solely because I had the advantage of an alarmed vehicle. I volunteered to set up an information tent and liaise with Greenpeace. A mobile phone for the camp was given to me, but it wasn’t much use to us because the police had blocked signals to our camp. To call out I had to walk a mile to the village train station!

Every day we would slow-walk the trucks down the hill to Cuadrilla’s site.

I wrote about it on social media and kept up a blog with photos whenever I could, to convey the information I was gathering in the Info Tent. I knew that few people fully understood the risks of fracking. I wrote this poem at the time:

Is this the future you are racing to achieve?
When you drill down to suck and thieve,
When you sell your souls for a golden dollar
Leaving pollution and filth for kids to swallow
Is money and war really all you need?
Are you truly a vampire waiting to feed
On the wreckage of life, water and air,
Making cash your God, not a ha'penny to spare....
I pity your kids who will question your ways
I hope you regret this for the rest of your days.

At 61 I should have been retiring! Well, that was what the government told me. Looking back on 2013, I had no idea how long that protest would last and how hard the fight would be.

As it turned out, it was just the start of a whole decade dedicated to standing in the way of technocrats and bullies.

Fran at Barton Moss Anti Fracking Camp Nov 2013

ONWARDS!
xx