Friday 24 August 2007

What I Did On My Holidays

Thought I'd share my fondest memories of the fantastic Climate Camp at Heathrow last weekend, partly as an excuse to throw in loads of links which also help explain why I went. In no particular order...

Two kids amusing themselves on the
Rinky-Dink one afternoon at the camp by singing "Jingle Fucking Bells". With gusto.

People in the Yorkshire barrio* playing with a chess set they'd carved out of carrots.

Running from the campsite towards
BAA offices through a huge field of shoulder-high dead broad bean plants, being chased by screaming riot and mounted police and wearing a summary of the Tyndall Report strapped to my hand.

Blockading BAA with a big fluffy white rabbit called Eliot, who was very happy to be there and got fed carrots by the people in "Grow Your Own" vegetable costumes. Watching people spotting him for the first time who naturally assumed they were hallucinating due to lack of sleep.

A very straight-faced policeman attending the open meeting at the blockade, and answering his mobile phone by saying in a Very Important voice "I'LL HAVE TO CALL YOU BACK, I'M IN A MEETING!"

Theo from
Seize the Day singing the policeman song on the Rinky-Dink. It's about a policeman who decides to join the 365 blockade of the nuclear submarine base there, and as far as I can find out it hasn't been recorded yet. I promise you it's worth going to Faslane on October 1st just to hear him sing it to the police there.

Someone I think was called Cosmo doing Paul Allen's "The Mosh Song" on Monday night in the main marquee - much better than Paul Allen himself did it. Also Duncan, who I can't find a link for, singing "James Bond is an Upper Class Copper" and "Drugs vs Sport". Brilliant.

Going to the toilet, drunk, at about 2am on the last night and finding... a clean toilet seat and plenty of clean dry toilet roll! The whole thing was so well organised that I'm going to have to give up making cynical remarks about organising piss-ups in breweries
by consensus. Eventually.



* A barrio is a "neighbourhood", usually involving a marquee with a kitchen and space to meet and sit around. Camps are organised into barrios so that people from similar parts of the country can meet, eat and work together.

4 comments:

Calvin Jones said...

Thanks for that recall. I have to agree about the rabbit it was a bit to rabbit like to be real.

I personally liked all the wind turbines. I asked the police how many we need before we are a wind farm. We had 6.

There are quite a few clips up on youtube at the moment. Many of the workshops where also recorded and will be uploaded over the next week or so.

James Higham said...

Sounds a real cultural experience.

Anonymous said...

I'm still gutted I missed it. Good to see consensus getting a thumbs up. Good stuff!

Anonymous said...

I agree it does sound like a real cultural experience.

I can say for certain that in the police camp at Heathrow and its surrounds there also was lots of stunning moments which I dare not go into.