SUNDAY VISIT TO MEMORY LANE

21st August 2022

Today I have mostly been chin wagging with my very humble friend, Peggy. Actually she has a terrific sense of humour which plays on a non-existent superiority. You have to see it in action to appreciate it, really.
She is a Yorkshire Brit who was reluctantly whisked off to live in Australia by her parents in 1963. She always wanted to return to Blighty and eventually made it happen in 1996. Since then, her itchy feet have had her popping from North to South of the planet many times.

She has two adult kids in Australia and various siblings. She has a very few friends in UK. I am one of them.

Peggy and I met at a protest event in Watford, June 2013. We were objecting, among quite a crowd, to the Bilderberg group and were there to hear Alex Jones and David Icke give speeches.

Image: Peggy with Alex Jones at the Bilderberg Protest

The weather was glorious, the company various and the whole event highly dubious. An organising team had set up a ‘protest area’ on the other side of a river from the exclusive Grove Hotel.

A few weeks later, we again met up at Balcombe in Sussex where we were protesting against fracking in the UK. I became the treasurer, purely because I was the only person on the camp who had an alarmed car! I also cared for the information tent and cleaned the chemical toilets which had been provided by Greenpeace. I always get the best jobs….. 🤣😂

Image: drum ensemble at Balcombe Gates, kicking up a racket

Image: Me obstructing the grumpy police with the obligatory cup of coffee in hand!

Image: A typical day slowing the trucks as they tried to get into the frack site at Balcombe.

Peggy bought herself a tent and turned up ready to leap on the back of a truck, which she did very suddenly. However the police hauled her off to jail and she was prevented from returning for two weeks. When she went to court the charges were all dropped so she quickly bought herself a little car and came back to the camp. I was a fixture at Balcombe throughout that summer and when it was over we all went home and rested until the following November when we reconvened at Barton Moss near Salford. We spent the winter camped in freezing conditions on a windswept flat plain alongside a small airfield.

Image: Min Bee and Peggy at Barton Moss

The police at that camp were not adverse to violence and intimidation. It was a hard job for us to keep positive but we did it. Igas were planning to drill there and we worked hard to alert the local people to this very secret invasion of their area.

Sonia Poulton interviewed me for an hour in a phone call for the People’s Voice and came to visit us on New Year’s Eve. I was so stunned to see her! Truthferret Films recorded a lovely video of the occasion which makes me all teary every time I see it:

In 2015 Peggy and I went to Paris for COP21. We were given a run around by some French ‘activists’ but were lucky enough to team up with some Spanish ones who let us stay with them at their shared flat. They had written a book about fracking and I bought 20 copies to give out to anti-fracking friends. I began to struggle to breathe that weekend and we were very confused by that.

The following summer Peggy took me to visit the Hellfire Caves and we discovered that my breathing difficulties had worsened when I had to walk back up the steps…. still I took no notice and presumed I would recover. We were able to go to the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge that year too. Here we are just as dawn broke.

In September of 2016 Peggy returned to Australia to meet her new grandson, Oliver. Meanwhile I was scheming up a new anti-fracking camp in Swanage, Dorset where Infrastata were planning to drill and frack for gas on the cliffs above the famous Jurassic Coast.

I attended a Swanage Town Council meeting and spoke about the likelihood of us mounting an oppositional camp if they did not rescind the planning permission they had previously granted. They contacted the police and I received a warning call suggesting that I had threatened the councillors. I said:

“No. I did not threaten them. I promised them!”

In October we occupied the field only 2 days before Infrastrata intended to begin work on the site. This video was made by an American visitor and includes an explanation by Lion and Chrissie who were camp residents throughout the winter:

We maintained a camp there, supported by local residents, until the planning permission expired just before Christmas 2016 and then we had a party to celebrate our success. Infrastrata went bankrupt.

Peggy kept in touch with us throughout and finally came back to stay for a brief holiday in the summer of 2019 when we both had to face the fact that I was very poorly, having suffered emphysema, a heart attack and a stroke which left me with oedema of my lower legs and feet. I could no longer walk or even stand for more than a few minutes.

In January of 2022 Peggy returned to UK again and managed to duck and dive the vaccines.

She served her time in quarantine at my home and then moved to Heckmondwike in Yorkshire close to where she had grown up and she settled her gypsy itchy feet briefly, but will be returning to Australia again in September because she wants to look after her sister.

This weekend Peggy is staying with us in Dorset and has already cooked her famous real Indian curry. We had very burned mouths and only made it worse by eating the second portions for Sunday morning breakfast today, because that is how reprobate we old codgers really are!

I don’t think that this will be the last time I see Peggy.
I am relying on those itchy feet to bring her back to visit us again eventually!