Brightside
 
Scene: Two beings recline side by side on a slab of rock, angled towards the audience. The rock is the size of an emperor-size bed. The stage is in semi-darkness, lit only by a dim indigo light. It is otherwise adorned only with sparse creosote brush. There is a conspicuous X shaped fissure in the ‘earth’ below the slab. Rep reclines above Talpa. When they speak, their accents and intonations are distinct from each other: Rep speech is more formal and clipped, Talpa’s is a rustic brogue.
 
Talpa is dressed all in black in a hooded smock and un-tailored, three-quarter length trousers made from a rough cloth, similar to the garb of a Vietnamese peasant.  Her hood is always up, shrouding her face which, when glimpsed, is very white. She has small dark eyes, pale lips. Her hands and feet are bare, very white, and large for her body size. She is shy, humble, diffident but fierce when roused. Her voice is usually soft, her eyes typically downcast.
 
Rep is clad in the beautiful indigo robes and shesh of a Tuarag man. He is taciturn and awkward with emotion, tending to be haughty. His deep voice is usually a reasoned monotone. His shesh covers most of his face and forms a turban on his head, but his reptilian skin shines blue-black. He wears desert goggles, like old fashioned motorcycle goggles. His eyes are bright amber.
 
TALPA:          Do you think it would be able to live up here?
REP:               There’s no precedent. No one knows whether the ancient gene editing would cross – er – not species, I suppose, but between our races. Or whether it would be dominant. It has never happened.
TALPA:          In our history we speak of classes not races, the elite who could afford editing and those others who could not.
REP:               Whether race or class, we have no knowledge of hybridity.
TALPA:          And ever Mark Twain shall meet.
REP:               (With no hint of amusement) I think that’s ‘never the twain shall meet’.
TALPA:          We don’t read, obviously.
REP:               Obviously.
TALPA:          (With a small shiver of fear) Is it getting bright?
REP:               Not yet. Quite soon, though. I’ll make sure… You know.
TALPA:          Do you think I should get rid of it?’
REP:               (After a pause) Could you do that, get rid of it?
TALPA:          I don’t like us calling it ‘it’.
REP:               Could you… (He hesitates, swallows, and his tongue darts out of his mouth). Could you get rid of her or him?
TALPA:          I don’t like ‘get rid’ either.
REP:               No, of course, but could you?
TALPA:          Termination is quite common among us these days. Because of lack of space and poor air quality. We’re very restricted. After we went on retreat, there had to be policies. People tell the story that in the first days we needed diggers so badly we were encouraged to reproduce willy-silly!
REP:   Nilly. I don’t know what it means.
 
The sit in silence for a moment, both considering. Talpa turns her head to look directly up a Rep; she moves her body towards him a little, inviting affection. Rep appears wholly unaware of the signals.
 
TALPA:          The lizards, the little ones, are awakening. I can hear their tiny claws on the sandstone rocks.
REP:               Wouldn’t there be questions?
TALPA:          Not really. Termination is quite common. I would surely be scolded for not taking care but…
REP:               And no checks? They wouldn’t find out that it’s, that she’s… He’s?
TALPA:          I don’t think so, but I’ve never… Maybe we do. Some standard procedure. Oh Sun!
 
Talpa clasps her hands to her face.
REP:               What would they do if they did find out? To you?
TALPA:          I don’t think there’d be punishment, but people would be so frightened. I would be shunned.
REP:               (Evidently surprised, he looks directly at Talpa, intent) Really?
TALPA:          (Fidgets a little, discomfited) Well…
REP:               I realise it would be a shock, but I’d have thought your people would be pleased, that they might feel, well, honoured or something?
TALPA:          (Keeping her tone even) Blessed?’
REP:               Well...
TALPA:          (Suddenly angry) You really think you’re so much better than us? I know that you do. Do you pity me is that it, is that the attraction? Or am I just a pallid curiosity to you, an object of scientific interest?
REP:               (Slowly, considered, felt) You are beautiful, to me. From when I first watched you, stealing food from the shade-houses, eating that peach, dribbling the juice…
TALPA:          (Squirming a little with pleasure, grinning) You are that word you told to me.
REP:               (Breathes the exotic syllables) A voyeur.
TALPA:          I didn’t even scent you or sense your movement. You were suddenly just there and there was no chance to run, no way past or under. I was so frightened…’
REP:               Frozen.
TALPA:          You’re so, so clean, sharp and almost odourless like onyx. Your slow heat…
           
REP moves closer to TALPA, sliding his arm about her shoulder. His tongue flicks over his lips and his mouth finds hers. They begin a passionate kiss, his hand slips under her smock…
 
TALPA:          (Pushes him away, gently but firmly) No.
REP:               I want you and I know that you…
TALPA:          (Looks away from him, seeking the horizon) The bright is coming. We have to talk this through. People will notice soon: I can feel it.
REP:               It doesn’t show.
TALPA:          Seeing is not how my people know.
REP:               Could I… Again… Touch?
 
Talpa guides his hand to her belly, hold it there for a long moment. Rep’s whole body shivers with excitement, fear… He removes his hand, as if burned but studies his fingers with eyes full of wonder
 
REP:               Before you have to go down…  (Unable to hide the horrified fascination in his voice as he makes himself say the word) Below.
TALPA:          Beneath.
REP:               (Fuelling his own excitement and desire) Underground.
TALPA:          Sub…
 
They fall into each other’s arms again, kiss, a hard embrace. TALPA wraps her arms tight around REP, drinking him in…
 
REP:               You’re crushing me!
TALPA:          (Releases him) Oh I’m sorry, I…
 
Light plays on Rep’s face rendering his skin iridescent, shifting red, copper and gold. The two remain close together, Rep propping his head on his hand, gazing at Talpa. Reaching into her hood, he strokes her face with the back of his fingers.
 
REP:               Your skin is velvet.
TALPA:          Your scales turn me on too.
REP:               The earthy taste of you is intoxicating.
TALPA:          Your breath is tingling fresh, electric: ozone.
REP:               Your nose. Those tiny ears…
TALPA:          Weird that you don’t have any.
REP:               We’re so very different.
TALPA:          And yet the same.
REP:               If my people found me with you, they would surely kill me too. You wouldn’t believe the stories they tell of your people. They consider you filthy beyond imagining. For most of my kind, mating with one of you, it would be like… Like nothing else, incomparably perverse. Worse than with a corpse of even a camel.
TALPA:          Oh Sun and Moon and Stars!’ We hear stories of arenas, of hunts, using us for sport!
REP:               Folk tales, the rarest of cult events if not wholly myths, I assure you. These days you are regarded like bad spirits, Tokoloshe, too fearfully foul even to contemplate as real.
TALPA:          Well, thank you.
REP:               I mean…
TALPA:          You blame us for poisoning the ground water, the collapse of rickety buildings or some ancient bridge, and, of course, all missing and spoiled food, anything stolen in the night.
REP:               We can testify to the veracity of the latter, at least.
TALPA:          Mostly we eat the fungi we cultivate. And roots. Also worms.’
REP:               (Grimaces and makes a disgusted noise deep in his throat)
TALPA:          It’s not as bad as eating insects! (It’s her turn to grimace)
REP:               Insect protein saved our race.
TALPA:          Worms sustain us. But your fruit and vegetables are so sweet and rich, just too tempting, especially for those like me who have a green tooth.’
REP:               Your teeth aren’t green, they are as light and sparkling as middle day.
TALPA:          As the ghost of middle day maybe. I don’t believe you. Tell me again how I look to you?’
REP:               You tell me how you sense me first. Tell me about my scent and how keen touch and sound are for you: Tell me how I feel to you, I like that. Very much.
TALPA:          (Strictly) We don’t have time for this.
REP:               Please, I…
TALPA:          Don’t you feel anything for him or her?
REP:               Conceived in all that shocking sense of the forbidden, in the elation of the strange and, well, yes, in sin.
TALPA:          I don’t believe in sin. My people are steadfast: either divinity never existed or it forsook us long, long ago. Or, most commonly, we believe that we killed it: you and us; the people of Before. The gods died with the climate.
REP:               Some of my own people keep the spark of divinity alive. To survive we must have hope, even false hope. Our philosophers and scientists…
TALPA:          The idea of hope is cruel distraction from the conflagration. As the earth gets ever hotter and the weather more random, amidst the flame and chaos, where are we to find such hope?
REP:               Perhaps in our union?
TALPA:          (Undistracted) Respite is all we can hope for, us underground and you in the shade of your space mirrors and your solar shields.
REP:               But we have come together, you and I…
TALPA:          It’s not just about us and our twists anymore.
REP:               You mean trysts, I think. Although…
TALPA:          We have it to consider, him or her.
REP:               I wonder would it – she or he – see properly?
TALPA:          (Snarls) Properly? Sand and Silt and Clay! Would he be as deaf to the Earth as you are…
REP:               Or be able to stand the heat? I keep coming back to that.
TALPA:          Maybe he would be grey, unable to live in either the bright or the murk. Maybe he’d burn up here and wouldn’t be able to breathe the subterranean air nor tolerate our high carbon dioxide levels.
REP:               On the Brightside, she could be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind.
TALPA:          You’re not making a clod of sense, why would she have one eye and be a man? That is solid rock, no way through: I don’t get it. Please, burrow deeper!
REP:               It’s an old, old story, though I think that I misrepresent the plot. I was supposing that our daughter might be able to know both the bright and the dark, become a bridge to bring our peoples together – back together.’
TALPA:          (Gulps) Daughter…
REP:               I have that feeling. Ever since I touched your belly. It is very strong, and I never knew anything like it before.  I cannot explain, but I now feel certain.
TALPA:          The best of both bad worlds?
REP:               Or, as you said, the worst.
 
They fall silent again for a long moment. A predawn breeze stirs the creosote brush and their clothes.
 
REP:               I think you should have our daughter.
TALPA:          (Sits up and moves away from him) Oh you do, do you?
REP:               Yes, I do.
TALPA:          Well it wouldn’t be you who gave birth to a monster or a god, would it? It wouldn’t be you who people would reject, perhaps harm. Oh no, you’d be up here bathing in the morning Sun, feeding, fuelling; you would be happily tending the fruits in your shade houses, riding your stupid camel…
REP:               You think we have it easy? If I got caught out in the full heat of the sun, it would explode me – I’ve seen it happen: A woman I knew. She could stand this life no longer, not after… The dryness, the constant thirst, the care we must take, the harsh discipline of climate life. Her spirit was parched. She deliberately stepped out into the midday mad, stripped off her robes, her shesh, and stood naked. I could only watch from the solar shelter as she glowed, pulsed, then burst into flame like a bloody star...
TALPA:          A woman you knew?
REP:               Yes.
TALPA:          How well did you know her?
REP:               Oh for the sake of rain! You cannot be jealous of a dead woman, someone who killed herself so horribly.
TALPA:          Oh, can’t I? Well, thanks for telling me how I can feel.
REP:               That woman bore a heavy burden, for all of us.
TALPA:          (Sarcastically) She sounds so cool.
REP:               Sometimes I envy you, hidden away underground, chilled out and safe.’
TALPA:          Safe? Safe? With you people still boring into our homes for the last drops and nuggets, splashes and puffs of fuel, fracking us to death, even though you have unlimited sunshine!
REP:               We always need more and more fuel for cooling.
TALPA:          Scrapping the barrel!
REP:               Scraping.
TALPA:          Safe? With you causing earthquakes and pumping chemicals into the Earth that we live in? It’s you who poison the water, yours and ours!
REP:               Enough!
TALPA:          Never enough, not for you lot!
REP:               Stop it now…
TALPA:          Safe? When the super-storms that you seed strike with no warning and our burrows flood…
REP:               (Angrily) You should go. Now. There is already pink on the horizon.
 
Talpa looks and indeed there is indeed the faintest of pink casts to the light.
 
TALPA:          (Quivering with fright and anger, but stubborn) You sodding go! I don’t want to have to look at you anymore. Go back to your shining black women!
REP:               Oh, don’t be ridiculous...
TALPA:          Well I am, aren’t I? Mating with a dry-roast reptile!
REP:               You don’t mean that, you…
TALPA:          (Screams) Go!
REP:               Tomorrow night?
TALPA:          (Slaps him across the side of his face with her big left hand) Get out of my senses!
 
Rep reels back from the blow, but refuses to look away. Slowly, deliberately he rises, freshly wrapping his shesh around his lower face.
 
REP:               (Ice-Cold) If that’s how it is to be.
TALPA:          (Holding back hot tears and hugging herself) Just leave me alone!
 
Rep gives her a long look and then jumps down from the rock, lands lithely and strides off towards the east (back stage) where a pink-orange dawn light is now clearly visible. He disappears from view. Talpa sobs. Then realising sunrise is imminent, she too scrambles down from the rock and makes to scuttle away…. In her terrible hurry, though, she catches her foot in a fissure in the Earth. There is an audible ‘crack as her ankle breaks and she pitches to fall flat on her face. She cries out. Dawn continues to gather…
 
TALPA:          (Shouts, louder each time) Rep! (Pause, she sobs) Rep! (Pause) REP!
 
Talpa turns her body around as far as she can, sniffing the air for any sign of rescue, cocking her ear, listening. Her hood falls from her face. Everything is silent but for a dawn chorus of chirping, clicking lizards that grows ever louder. A front of golden light begins to creep forward across the stage. Talps pulls desperately at her trapped leg. She screams loudly. The light reaches her injured foot.
 
TALPA:          (Yells after Rep) Hope! (And then calmly towards the audience) Of course. Her name is Hope.
 
Cruel white light shines straight into the audience’s eyes for several painful seconds, the chirping of lizards is deafening. When the light goes off and the chirping subsides to nothing, the stage is empty, suffused in crimson light. Whisps of smoke rise from the stage where Talpa lay.
 
CURTAIN

     When he came back to bed he was already there.
     His first thought was to tiptoe back out of the bedroom, embarrassed. Silently scolding himself for a fool, he wondered whether he was dreaming. Sleep-walking maybe, though he’d never done that before. Not as far as he knew. After a moment’s pause for thought, he pinched his cheek. It hurt. He tried pinching his forearm and that hurt too. Not asleep, not dreaming. Probably not. Who could tell with dreams? He was sure that some dreams had settled into his memory as realities, ethereal but now a part of his being. They were there now, like an almost itch, a sensation he couldn’t quite perceive. Crazy, now he came to think….
     That was it!
     He’d gone mad. That followed reasonably enough. For how could he be standing stupefied in the middle of his own bedroom and also be asleep in his bed next to his partner of thirty years? If it was him? Which it couldn’t be. That would be insane. He would be insane for thinking it. Stark, staring. But mad men didn’t rationalise, did they? Lunatics weren’t logical. And he needed to understand. That’s what drew him to stay put and look more closely. All he could see was the back of the figure’s head and an arm stretched out across his partner. Not his partner, his partner!  
     What struck him next was jealously. That outstretched seemed protective, possessive. His blood ran cold. His partner was having an affair. And here was the gigolo in his bed, caught in the act: In flagrante delicto! But it wasn’t much of a ‘blazing offence’, was it? Caught in the adulterous act of sleeping soundly and wearing a striped nightshirt identical to his own? And a lover who slipped in for an illicit assignation, albeit dormant, in the few minutes when the cuckold got up in the night to urinate. Ridiculous. But, when he thought about it all through, what didn’t seem so farcical, or indeed surprising, was that his partner should seek a lover. The imposter in their bed was the most exciting thing that had happened there for years.
     Exciting?
     Terrifying!
     The hair on his neck and arms suddenly stood on end and his flesh prickled with goose bumps. Whatever it was, this was certainly an intruder of one sort or another. And intruders were alien and dangerous. That was the defining rationale here. Trembling, he quickly cast around for a weapon, settling only on his partner’s wooden hairbrush on the dressing table. Tip-toeing across the room, he picked it up and held it in front of him in both hands. He felt immensely foolish. But from here he had a slightly better view of the intruder. Almost certainly male by the height of him, though he was very slim. His hair was turning grey and thinning, tousled in sleep. He ran his fingers through his own hair and then began to brush it, all the time fixed on the intruder. The action soothed his spiralling panic. The intruder looked so unnervingly familiar that it made his stomach pitch and he felt dizzy.
     A brother?
     A twin brother? An identical twin brother? But he didn’t have any siblings at all. And his long-gone but endlessly ordinary parents hadn’t had any secrets. Again, not as far as he knew. When it came right down to it, though, he decided he didn’t know much at all.           Shame, a kindred spirit might have been….
     A hoax!
     That was it, a prank. Maybe that followed also. A desperate logic. Voracious for ratings and so ever-increasingly macabre in their conceptions, some reality TV show was playing a trick on him. He looked around for signs of camera, microphones, wires… Nothing. But they’d be good at that, concealment, their stock-in-trade. Some illusionist with delusions of grandeur, imagining themselves a behavioural psychologist, had set him up. He’d seen TV programmes where they made people do the strangest things. Murder, almost. But if he did leap across the room onto his own bed and beat the imposter’s brains to soup with the hair brush, would they come from somewhere to stop him? Would they be in time? And would they be insured? They probably hadn’t thought of that, weren’t that together. He’d read in his newspaper of accidents when minor celebrities and ordinary people signing up to do dangerous acts and extraordinary deeds: jumping motorbikes over cars, surviving in the Artic or the Sahara… The nerve of it. In his own home. His castle. Why, he had a good mind to… He gripped the hairbrush tightly. But would it be murder? Manslaughter?
     Suicide?
     He took another step to that he could get a better look at the imposter’s face.  It didn’t make sense. Who would want to set him up, see this dwindling middle-aged man lose it on TV? Not much of a spectacle.
     Maybe the intruder was just the worst burglar ever, a thief in the night who had simply been overcome with the need for a nap and stolen into bed! He edged closer to the bed again. So, why was this burglar wearing the same nightshirt as him? And wasn’t he a bit long in the tooth for the robbery game? But maybe that’s why he’d succumbed to sleep? It was imperative that he get a good look at the intruder’s face. He shuffled a little nearer, peering into the deep shadow that masked the man from him, a shadow cast by his partner in the thin moonlight that cracked between the curtains.
     It could be an elaborate act of revenge, of course, but he’d surely never given anyone cause. He reviewed his life. In the nano-seconds that analysis took, he dismissed revenge. If only his life had been that interesting. He’d never done anything despicable nor distinctive, not even decisive really. Nothing much real. If only anyone hated him that much, felt anything that strongly for him. Maybe his partner? Could one have a violent sense of apathy, lassitude or detachment? Wouldn’t that be a contradiction in terms? Vengeful ennui? His partner might just be bored enough to conceive of something this macabre. Just to rouse him perhaps, to ginger him up, put some life into him. Then it came to him.
     He was dead.
     And he…      Must be a ghost. He took a fearful step closer to the bed, watching for the rise and fall of the intruder’s chest as he breathed. Nothing. So, it was true, he’d died in his sleep. So, why was he still here? But then again, where did he think he was going? He’d never believed. But he was somehow sure that he should just be gone, non-existent. Not here, looking down on his own body. Is this how it was, death? Was this limbo, would he have to wait here until he was redeemed? And how long would that take? What had been his sin, anyway? Was it sinful to lose interest in life, including your own, as the world sapped the aspiration and the joy from you? Was it sinful to feel lonely and alone, to fall into languid step, trudge hopeless through a pointless pantomime to an unremarked demise? Maybe his sin was simply not believing? How long would he have to stay here? Electrons flared and flashed in his brain. And, though it lasted mere moments, this dispiriting reverie became an unendurable stretch in time.
     The imposter snored.
     He took an involuntary step back, barely stifling a scream.
     Alive!
     He was alive! No, he was alive. So where did that leave him? He moved deliberately right up to the edge of the bed and leaned over, peering at the intruder, craning his neck. Definitely alive, no corpse and no dummy. And definitely him. Himself. No doubt about it. So, not merely an intruder, not a dream being, a figment, a gigolo, an actor nor a wraith. Not a twin. As far as he could tell. But then, as he’d already established, he couldn’t tell very much for certain.
     What was a kindred spirit?
     Something suffused him, another wave of fear, yes, but something else, something more: dizzying exhilaration. If the imposter was him, well not him but as near as dammit is to swearing, then he was free. Scot-free! Light-headed, he had to catch himself to avoid pitching forward onto the bed and waking his liberator up. And he definitely didn’t want that, not now. His mind was racing. He could just gather a few things and leave, go now. No more bills to pay, no more absurd steps on the dreary treadmill to non-existence to plan with his partner. No more silent, healthy breakfasts. No more fruit, wheat bran, green tea, nor kale smoothies! No more hospitals and clinics, prostate examinations and stool samples, This… This facsimile could stay here and try to stave off disease, court a frigid immortality though joyless moderation.
     Stay dummy!
     He, himself, was at liberty to leave, make a break for it. No ties, no obligations. The world was his oyster! Except…
     He hated oysters.
     And, if there was any vestige of joy left in him, it was the affection he felt for his books, and especially his music, the comforting familiar encompass of this house, his easy chair which had moulded to him. His bed into which he had impressed his thin body, into which he could settle every night, secure. His bed, not his bed. This bed ain’t big enough… For three. It wasn’t him who should leave, the imposter. There was no escape in flight, anyway, just other dues to pay. It didn’t make sense. This was going to take some thinking through. Ever so gently, he sat down on the corner of his bed…
     And when his partner woke up he was already gone.
     That had never happened before, not in thirty years. Worried, his partner got up, donned a dressing gown and went downstairs. From the kitchen came the sound of him singling. Believing the strangest things, loving the alien. Another thing that never happened. Although he listened to a lot of music, he never sang. Had never ever whistled before, even tunelessly. Through the glass-door of the kitchen, he could be seen cutting the rind from bacon with the sharpest knife from the drawer. There had been no bacon in the house. The knife was used for kale for…
     Hands softly cover his partner’s eyes and his voice whispers.
     Boy, do we have a surprise for you!
     And then his voice again, in gleeful unison now as he emerges from the kitchen.
     Two’s company!
 

I took part in a photo marathon in Aberystwyth last week - 6 pictures in 6 hours on 6 themes. I didn't win, of course, but I quite like my photos and love sharing them!

The ironic thing about posting this is that it's about how difficult internet access is for the not-so-mystery couple in the newspaper (Herald) story... Lotte actually wrote this and I edited it. At the end there are some photos of where we live to compensate (a bit) for rural discrimination 

The Herald spoke with just one couple among the very many people in Ceredigion who are frustrated by the lack of broadband access on a daily basis. Our respondents live just a few hundred metres from the A487 between Llanrhystud and Aberystwyth, a road along which fibre optic broadband has been laid in the last year or so. As with other cases, our householder’s quest for broadband is a lengthy saga. In 2005 they found the perfect house and checked that broadband was available for the postcode: ‘Result!’ Both worked from home and made extensive use of the internet, including email: it was essential to their livelihoods. As soon as they moved in, then, they applied to BT for broadband. The process was long and bureaucratic but BT were happy to sell broadband to this address. So, our new homeowners paid up front, because that was the only option. Eventually, engineers come to check and became very excited by the length of the telephone line to the house: They had never come across one that long! ‘But what does that mean?’ our couple asked. ‘It means you can’t have broadband, sorry.’
 
It’s still only 2006 and our intrepid couple refuse to be daunted. They contact BT to try to get the broadband deal refunded and explore alternatives. They apply for dial-up internet and go back in time to hearing that strange electronic ‘brrr-biiip-brrr’ sound that defined ‘connectivity’ in the 1980s. But dial-up works poorly and is very expensive. The service is on and off, as is the phone line itself. On an almost annual basis it is ploughed up by a neighbouring farmer. When BT finally turn out to fix it, they seemingly Sellotape the line back together and leave it to the untender mercy of next year’s ploughman. When it does work at all, the line is usually so ‘crackly’ as to be almost inaudible. Just what you want when communicating with a business partner, client or potential employer in the ‘developed world’, i.e. Zambia, China, Peru… Meanwhile, the couple go through the annual ritual of trying to get BT to credit them for the months with no telephone line. Through 2007 and 2008 the battle to get the broadband deposit and monthly payment refunded continues. Writing letters in ever increasing font size and bold type finally elicits a response from the BT Chair person’s office, promising action. No progress on broadband, though: ‘Keep trying, our services improve all the time!’ is the message from BT.
 
In 2008, the village of Blaenplwyf gets together to express its collective unhappiness about the lack of connectivity. Residents conduct a survey and hold meetings about broadband services. Some have very slow broadband via BT, others nothing at all. Villagers persist with exploring the possibilities, including Welsh Assembly Government funding. Elin Jones was very helpful, our respondents note. They themselves try mobile broadband with Orange, plugging ‘dongles into USB ports, but get a services no better than the dial-up. It becomes apparent that 3G is unavailable in the area. Then, at a village meeting, Three Mobile promise 3G mobile broadband! Our couple and many others sign up on the spot. By 2009 they are chugging along with mobile broadband which, although it does not work brilliantly, is a big improvement on dial-up. But, so delirious are they to be within touching distance of the twenty-first century, our couple exceed their 1GB monthly allowance and incur a charge of an additional £100! Three Mobile do not give any warning that the limit is about to be exceeded or what that will cost. Ouch! No more streaming or downloading for them.
 
From 2010 to 2014 the service begins to slow down as local users are added. Our couple up their allowance to 15GB, the maximum available, but the service remains poor and unreliable. They still have no chance of streaming films or TV programmes due to slow download speeds and limited monthly data allocation. Then the fibre-optic cables are laid along the main road and they can almost smell super-fast broadband.  They are advised by BT Openreach engineers to write to BT to ask to be included in plans for the area. They ask to change the phone line so they can get broadband. The couple make little or no use of their landline and only keep it to remain eligible for broadband from BT. With steam coming out of their ears, they nevertheless pay the quarterly charge of more than £85 just to keep their faint hopes alive. Then they are advised that BT has nothing to do with phone line plans as they are not responsible for the infrastructure. The couple sign up with Superfast Cymru. By 2015 it becomes impossible for two people working from home to keep within the 15GB per month allowance.  So, they are forced to add another 20GB per month, a new maximum limit for mobile accounts. Both accounts work but are neither is reliable. The landline remains faulty for several months after that year’s ploughing.
 
‘More fools us!’
In 2016, our respondent couple still get an ‘outrageously expensive’ bill for the landline every quarter. They confess to the Herald that the only time they use ‘the phone’ is to find their misplaced mobiles! In October they check again on fibre optic broadband and get the message: ‘Fibre not available’ from BT Community Fibre Partnerships: ‘You are connected to Aberystwyth via an 'EO (Exchange Only) line. Faster broadband is not available to you yet, the first cabinets in your area are expected to be upgraded by the end of the year.’ Over the ten years of their travails, BT have: ‘Constantly added insult to injury by signing us up to online billing when we could only use a dial-up line, continually bombarding us with offers of better broadband deals, despite many letters asking for such offers to be held back until they were actually feasible, plus keeping our line in a poor state of repair. And we keep holding on to our line so that one day we may be able to get broadband, more the fools us!’ Over the last ten years, although they otherwise love where they live and are deeply involved with the community, our couple have periodically been compelled to review the option of moving to somewhere that they could work without this constant hassle and expense over connectivity. This tragi-comedy, BT take note, is the human face of your unforgivably poor performance in Ceredigion. Shame on you.

With a nod to Andy Merrifield's 'The New Urban Question'
 
Singing their allegro low anthem, the joint of meat jumped the barrier into the subway station. Without a flicker of anything but the requisite fixed half-smile on his face, the inspector in his ticket-office blanked them so perfectly that they gave him a round of applause as they went on their way. All around them, commuters continued pouting their black lipstick lips, indifferent, intent on the screens of their devices, listening to muzak through ear-buds. Sluggish but inexorable, the commuters shuffled.
     ‘Heading somewhere not special?’ a slice asked.
     See how they run.
     The meat arrived on the platform in a blur and formed up in a seething knot, teasing and jostling each other as they waited for the train, their laughter yoga growing louder and increasingly raucous. One of them sliced off to deface an electronic poster advertising an app: ‘Share the passion!’ - a nudge to encourage commuters to send chain-reaction texts to ‘affirm the challenge and joy of living’. The slice of meat changed ‘passion’ to ‘poison’ with her jacker-hacker and added their trademark icon, a heart with fork stuck in it. Every poster in the city would be changed. For a short while, a very short while, her subvertising would stand.
     When the train came, the meat reformed into a rolling maul and crammed into an already over-crowded carriage. Forming a tight circle, back to back in the centre of the oppressively hot and airless space, the meat began shouting greetings to their fellow passengers, waving, winking, flirting… No one responded, dull eyes glued to their screens, black rouged lips slightly parted in pallid faces to reveal rows of perfect pearly-white teeth. Some did bob their heads in time with the muzak streaming in their ears, the sounds of elsewhere nowhere.
     Bored, the meat decided to play a game of pass the object above their heads. Each time one slice received the imaginary object from another, they noisily transformed it, changing its size and shape, mass and form: a squawking chicken, a pulsing quasar, a squeaking mouse, a juggernaut truck sounding its Klaxon… If the pinch-faced commuters even knew the objects the meat imagined and brought to life, they gave no sign, seemingly effortless in their blanking.
     At their stop the meat quit the carriage, one by one squeezing out and popping like corks from Champagne bottles. They stayed on the platform to wave their erstwhile fellow travellers fond farewells, blowing kisses, clasping their hands over their hearts. Parting even reduced some slices to crocodile tears.
     ‘Such meat sorrow!’
     Then, with no discernible signal, they all rushed for the exit, arms out at their sides, roaring jet planes on an un-bombing mission…
     Out of the subway and onto the city street, their senses assailed by an oppressive regime of neon and the thunderous groan of traffic. Exhaust fumes mingled with the aromas of food from everywhere in the world but no place anyone had ever visited or could ever go. And the sickly odours of multifarious waste, cloying the palate. Surging swarms of blanked, blanking people. Electronic billboards in every ever-shifting colour, every language and then some: pictographs, hieroglyphs.... Adverts for phone implants – ‘call girl’ and a picture of a short-skirted hooker, indecently young and thin, dialling, receiving; promotions for faster food, sweeter soda, designer e-cigarettes and stronger more exotic spirits, shifting to adverts for diets, heath farms, health foods, health care and rehab. Pitches for cosmetic surgery, gastric cropping and intimate trimming, for bio-enhancement. Sales slogans for sex and for Jesus, indiscernible offerings of salvation; for handguns – ‘man up, girl’, and automatic weapons; for cologne – ‘free spirited you’ or ‘escape today everyday’; for electronics companies, internet corporations, pharmaceutical giants, banks and bookmakers. Properties for sale or rent, to suit every pocket - so long as that pocket was infinitely deep. ‘Credit yourself’, rock bottom rates; pay-one-day loans…
     ‘I’m so tired,’ Goldie whispered, ‘drained. I need a break, to go with the flow, suck it up a while.’
     ‘You’re leaving us,’ Dom said, failing to get her to meet his gaze.
     ‘No, of course…’ Goldie began, squeezing her eyes closed, her hands cradling her face. ‘Just a rest. There’s a night job… I can build a little credit, get a few essentials together. I can’t go on against.’
     ‘If you plug into the feed,’ Dom said, ‘you’ll stay plugged.’
     ‘A month, two. No more,’ Goldie promised.
     ‘You’ll turn,’ Dom said.
     ‘I just need a little fare. And ease, down-time.’
     ‘You won’t rise-up again.’
     ‘I’ll reconnect with you at the squat.’
     ‘Goodbye.’
     Dom re-joined the reduced joint of meat who were simulating exuberant sex in the middle of the packed evening sidewalk. He noted that the crowd was all heading in one direction: There must be a product launch. Without registering the meat’s pornographic pantomime, the crowd parted to flow around them, re-merged, like a miracle sea.
     ‘Where’s Goldie?’ Puffa asked as she ground her rear into Dom’s crotch, exaggerating her movements to the exotic max, squealing with salacious delight.
     ‘Retired,’ Dom said, automatically responding to Puffa’s mime with his own overstated hip-thrusting, joining in with a fleshy chorus of orgasmic moans, groans, screams and exhortations: ‘deeper, harder, faster…’ Becoming a chant.
     ‘Fuck!’
     ‘Tired?’ Puffa queried, yelling to make herself heard above their racket.
     ‘Yes,’ Dom said.      
     The crowd converged on the giant store where You-Ni-Media told them the new ingestible device would be launched in this city. They arrived in their thousands then tens and then hundreds of thousands, making their slow, fixed smiling way in from the suburbs. Each was encouraged by the breaking product news that interrupted their muzak, vid feeds and social media e-solations with such regularity that it was the rule not the exception. Though it was impossible to discern just how, their wan unchanging features betrayed something of their fervour. Though the collective pace didn’t quicken, their shuffle was suffused with ardent tension. Tall or short, fat or thin, regardless of skin colour, everyone wore dark clothes, mostly shades of black or the darkest navy. They moved as a tide, washing along the street, filling it, enveloping it. As they neared the giga-store, the architecture of the street funnelled them into a tighter, denser throng, homogenous. A homeless man, sleeping near the warm air vent at one side of the store complex, awoke as the crowd parted around him and then, with no more room to part, trod over him. His curses and then curtailed screams were lost, unheeded. After only a few minutes he no longer even stained the patent shoes of the famished multitude.
*    *
The meat were evicted and lost the squat. In an impossibly short time it was redeveloped as a fitness centre and fried chicken franchise. Along with the squat went their plans for a social centre, something they’d read about on un-weeded sites still trailing on the web decades after their authors had passed. They had talked of sheltering refugees and the homeless, of free food, of makers’ workshops and legal aid, of street art, music and theatre classes. Most of all they’d talked of developing a cold-turkey capacity, to support people in unplugging from the feeds. They would have called the centre ‘The Joint’. But they had talked too long, planned too closely, hesitated. And lost. Now the meat was fragmented, slices couch-surfing with an ebb of friends, enduring familial condescension in the refuge childhood bedrooms, sleeping rough on roofs or stuffed in the cavities of the under-city.    
     Dom waited for other slices at the subway station, at first passing his time by staging shambling monster attacks on passing commuters, all of whom were wholly unmoved. Giving up, he read an ancient e-book downloaded from the under-web on his stolen slab.
     “Whose city? The answer, perhaps, is pretty clear: it’s the parasites’ city and their progeny is a species we can now label the parasitic city. A parasite, remember, is an organism that feeds off the larger “host” organism, an uninvited diner at the lodge who doesn’t pay for their grub. Parasites chomp away at the common-wealth the world over, eating their way inside the social body…”
     ‘Parasites feeding must be what made the zombies,’ Dom reflected aloud, nodding comprehension. ‘They don’t rise from the grave but are consumed to living death. Their spirits are drained.’
     Tonight’s action, which he had conceived and proposed, was to be a hit on one of the Terra-Malls. They were going to enter stores and try to give away goods to customers. Christmas was coming and the stores were even more laden than usual, ridiculously crammed with the unneeded, the next instant’s de-junk… The meat would press holovision-sets, uni-devices, smoothie synths, well-being monitors, designer clothes  - black was the new black again for next season – object d’art and game-stations into the hands of baffled, but expressionless shoppers, insisting they were gifts from a grateful management.
     ‘How to incubate such an alternative meme,’ Dom read from the slab, ‘how to dose up on it to strengthen our immunity system? How might it circulate as a prophylactic within the generative cells of our urban politic, permanently ridding us of parasites.’
     ‘We obviously never found out how,’ Dom muttered. ‘The social body is gutted and putrid to the core: insipid putrefaction, the zombie meme.’
     When he’d finished reading and put the slate on stand-by, Dom felt drained. Commuters continued to flow around him, oblivious, consumed.
     ‘Content.’
     His old-fashioned device quivered and bleated in his pocket and he took it out, thumbed access and read the text.
     ‘With you in spirit!’
     From Puffa.
     The most vital of them.
     The last of them.
​     Raw.
     Dom smiled, blankly.
     

A blast from the past: CIRCA seeks out Ronnie McDonald during the G8 summit in Germany, 2007

This story didn't make the Ceredigion Herald a couple of weeks ago: 'Hundreds face early death from Aberthaw pollution'
 
Up to 400 people die prematurely every year because of pollution from Aberthaw power station. That is one of the findings of a new report from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace which shows that plumes of toxic nitrogen dioxide and particle pollution from Aberthaw spread as far afield as France, the Republic of Ireland and across huge swathes of southern Britain. Apart from the cost in human suffering and grief, these fatalities cost society more than £220 million each year. Further costs are associated with ill health caused by the pollution, which includes 195,000 days of illness per year, 3,400 cases of childhood asthma symptoms, 260 cases of bronchitis in children, 290 hospital admissions and 20 babies born with low birth weight. Friends of the Earth Cymru have previously calculated that the coal-fired power station costs society £950 million in environmental and health costs every year.
 
Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, Gareth Clubb, said: ‘The pollution impacts of Aberthaw power station are startling. This one power station has prematurely ended the lives of thousands of people through its polluting emissions. To rub salt into the wound, Aberthaw is busily hoovering up tens of millions of pounds from electricity bill-payers in order to stay open in 2019. We’re all literally paying this power station to churn out polluting gases for years to come. It’s a clear demonstration of the critical importance of the UK retaining its environmental legislation once we leave the European Union. People right across the UK are signing up to our pledge asking MPs to keep our environmental protections – but we need thousands more to do so. The gargantuan scale of the pollution, the needless curtailing of the lives of hundreds of people every year, and the damage caused to our children’s lungs leave us with one course of action: Aberthaw power station must close.’
 
Greenpeace UK air pollution campaigner Areeba Hamid added: ‘The pollution from this coal plant is exacerbating a major public health crisis already affecting tens of thousands of people across the UK. EU air quality rules are among the most effective tools to put pressure on government to act on the problem, but Brexit is now putting them at risk. Our government has a duty to ensure its citizens are not forced to breathe illegal levels of air pollution. Ministers should act swiftly to put in place a new Clean Air Act to tackle air pollution and protect our health and that of our children.’
 
Opencast coalmining
As the Herald reported earlier this year when we covered Reclaim the Power’s occupation of FFos-y-Fran opencast coalmine, RWE’s Aberthaw power station burns around 35,000 tonnes of coal per week burned. And the majority of this coal comes from FFos-y-Fran. The largest opencast coalmine in Britain, FFos-y-Fran was established in 2007 under the pretext of being a land reclamation scheme. Despite legislation decreeing a 500 metre boundary, the mine is sited just 36 metres from some people’s homes. It is scheduled to mine 11 million tonnes of coal by 2025. If society allows this coal to be burned in power stations like Aberthaw, as well as nitrogen dioxide and particle pollution, it will emit around 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. As the UK’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions to mitigate climate change recedes with each passing day of Theresa May’s government, it looks increasingly as if  this 25 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be permitted to enter our atmosphere. One of Theresa May’s first acts on becoming prime minister was to scrap the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
 
Sited near Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan, at 1,555 Megawatts Aberthaw claims the capacity to supply around 3 million households. In January this year Aberthaw received a public subsidy of £27 million pounds to continue operating, money taken from people’s electricity bills. At the time a spokesperson for Reclaim the Power said, ‘Imagine the reaction of certain British newspapers if that subsidy had been to a windfarm!’ Aberthaw has been taken before the European Court of Justice because it emits more than twice the legal limit of harmful nitrogen oxides (NOx). NOx emissions can cause severe respiratory problems and aggravate heart disease. On 25th April, Aberthaw suddenly announced that it was downgrading its operations due to ‘challenging’ market conditions. Henceforth it would only produce electricity at times of peak demand, mainly during the winter. So, when you use electricity this winter, think about those 400 people who will die before their time because our government refuses to close anachronisms like FFos-y-Fran and Aberthaw and invest in clean, renewable forms of energy. As a voter maybe you can’t do anything for a while, but as a consumer you can choose to switch to a supplier that offers ‘green electricity’ today.
 
Friends of the Earth’s campaign: ‘After Brexit: help protect our environment’ 

With this title, this song so demanded new lyrics... So, to mark Theresa May's speech to the Tory conference, where she exprssed the desire to take Britain back to the future and establish a neo Victorian Empire, here's Rod's song re (jack) booted:

Maggie May
 
Wake up, Maggie I think I got the perfect host for you
She’s called Theresa and she thinks that you were really cool
I know she’ll keep you amused, while her body’s being used
Oh, Maggie, you so despised the poor
And Theresa’s just like your clone
Just like you, her heart’s is stone
She hates so much, you tell that it really hurts
 
The morning sun, when it's in her face really shows her rage
But that won't worry you none in her eyes, you're everything
She laughs at all of your jokes, thinks society’s a hoax
Oh, Maggie, you haven’t died anymore
You’ll love being outside the EU, seeing a hard Brexit through
You stole her soul and that means pain without a doubt
 
All she needed was a friend to lend an iron hand
Now she’s turned into a monster
And honest what a monster, she’ll freak you out
All she’ll do is wreck like you said
Kick the immigrants in their head
Oh Maggie you haven’t died anymore
You can cripple the NHS, Theresa is sure to say yes
You can replace Trident and press the button if you like
 
Privileged kids can collect their books and go to grammar school
All migrant workers you can f-off home, Mrs T’s no fool
And if you’re a refugee, you’ll get no bloody help for she
Is Maggie with Theresa’s May’s feral face
The new centre ground is far right
You’re fool if you don’t see the light
They steal you blind but you love them anyway
 
Maggie I wish you could just see her face
It’s just like yours in good old days
 

Maggie                                                                                    May

The ZAD is threatened with eviction and needs all our help in October and again in January (and all the time). Here's a story I wrote interviewing  Isabelle Frémeaux and John Jordan on a visit to the ZAD earlier this year. Caution: Red Pepper thinks this story is too boring to print!

‘La ZAD partout!’ and Heathrow expansion
The ‘Zone À Défendre’ – the zone to be defended - is a 4,000 acre land occupation to stop the development of a new Nantes airport near the village of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. The ZAD has become much more than a negative protest, though, because it is also saying a resounding yes to a different society with a radical economy. Putting the principles of ‘degrowth’ into practice means living within ecological limits with open, localized economies and resources more equally distributed through new forms of democratic institution. The slogan runs that the ZAD is ‘a struggle against the airport and its world’, and he occupation exists as a vibrant alternative to the outdated model of development that the airport represents.
Hosted by the La Rolandière collective, one of around sixty dwelling places that are home to the more than three-hundred people who have settled in the ZAD alongside the traditional farming community, I get the guided tour – ‘the zadfari’ – from collective member Yoann Le Guen. The project at La Rolandière is to convert a deserted house to create ‘a convivial landing’ for people arriving in the ZAD, activists, local support committees (many of whom are retired) and simply people driving through. La Rolandière will be a welcome point and information centre with a library and café. Other collectives on the ZAD include horticulturists, bakeries, a brewery, an engineering workshop, a pottery, a radio station and a weekly newspaper. Following a government consultation, the latest deadline for evicting the ZAD is October and I wanted to know how the occupation dealing with that threat. With airport expansion in London imminent, I was also curious about whether the ZAD experience was relevant to the fight against Heathrow: How might the two struggles support each other? Could there be a ZAD in Britain? Two members of La Rolandière, Isabelle Frémeaux and John Jordan, took a break from their building work to discuss such questions.

Seeing off Cesar
Unlike Heathrow, a new Nantes airport cannot be in any way be justified by citing high volumes of air traffic. Au contraire, the development is intended to stimulate economic growth in the region that, in turn, increases air traffic to boost airport profits. Opposition dates back to the 1970s and at the core of the controversy is land, the farmers working it and the communities who live there. The ZAD is on almost 5,000 acres of wetland, and rural life is the heartbeat of the struggle. A militant cadre of farmers from all over France stand ready to provide physical support if the government presses ahead with eviction. The logic of the airport plan is clearly outdated, say Isabelle and John, not least when the impact of the aviation industry on the climate is considered. Nevertheless, lobbied by the developers, Vinci, a mega-corporation with operations in over one-hundred countries including the UK, French authorities appear determined to proceed. In the face of overwhelming force, the ZAD will resist with awe-inspiring conviction: ‘Our first victory is that we defend ourselves despite the fact that nothing enables us to foresee victory.’

‘The logic for a new airport is expanding the metropolitan economy.’

In October 2012, the government, directed by then Minster of the Interior, now Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, launched its previous manoeuvre to evict the ZAD: ‘Operation Cesar’. Two thousand armed police spent several weeks in the attempt, deploying tear gas and demolishing a dozen dwellings.

Isabelle: ‘Almost by definition, radical movements always come unannounced. And always you have the feeling that the terrain is not prepared. Even here when the reoccupation demonstration happened, organisers were saying if we have five thousand people, we’re going to be really happy. And those who were saying there’ll be ten thousand were being told that they were stupid. Forty thousand people turned up! And everybody was just stunned at each other’s presence. I remember the climate camp in Heathrow - no one imagined there would be so many people. You never quite know what is going to be the trigger.’

‘Almost by definition, radical movements always come unannounced.’

In the face of such massive opposition, Operation Cesar was abandoned. Before the forty thousand defenders returned to their homes, however, they built a hamlet to replace the homes and farms the police had destroyed. Farmers protected the undertaking, circling tractors around the hamlet and chaining them together. On our bicycle zadfari, Yoann observed dryly that Cesar may have been a poor choice of operation name in a region where Asterix and the indomitable Gauls regularly defeated and embarrassed the Legions attempting to take their land. On the downside, the ZAD has likely made a powerful enemy in Manuel Valls. When considering the airport, the Prime Minister may be driven by revenge rather than reason.
Everyday resistance, everyday life

Isabelle: ‘The ZAD is a brilliant laboratory of experimentation in production, social relations, conflict resolution and resistance. What I find extraordinary, inspiring, especially to live every day, is that, because the resistance has been so strong, it has been given a few years to develop and that means it hasn’t just been a flash in the pan where you think: Oh well yeah, we’ve tried social relations for ten days, where it’s really easy to do things differently because everything is suspended. Like it’s very easy to be totally relaxed when you’re on holiday but really difficult when you go home.’

John: ‘One of the most beautiful slogans of the struggle is ‘against the airport and its world’. I think there’s been an evolution of all these people who began as an eco-protest or a protest about keeping farmers’ land and then start to make the link between more systemic questions of the world, questions of domination and capital. To be able to merge resistance and the creation of alternatives is the most key thing we have to do.’

‘Everybody was just stunned at each other’s presence.’

In the shadow of imminent eviction, I wonder how people find the will to keep making their lives, their relationships and their homes. Isabelle tells a story of a squatted collective in Barcelona where she asked a member. ‘How do you keep going when you know that maybe tomorrow you’re going to lose everything?

Isabelle: ‘He replied that’s what squatting is about: You build as though it’s forever, you fight to keep it, but you know that it can stop tomorrow. It’s a good preparation for the impermanence of life, anyway. That did change my life. ‘I can’t sacrifice liberty for security’ is a beautiful slogan, but when you actually introduce it into your everyday life it takes a different kind of texture. You have to learn to build a home without the accumulation that it means in capitalist society, because it could all go. And yet you still build a home and you still do the work that it entails.’

‘I can’t sacrifice liberty for security.’

John: ‘The government announced that in October they will come and expel the zone. And yet, there’s people who’ve just done the harvest and others setting up for making cheese in the winter; there’s a friend building a barn for a pharmacy, others building a place where they’re going to have a brewery and grow hops and wheat, and someone building a new house with solid foundations, saying ‘we’re not confined to building huts’. And I think every one of those acts is an act of resistance, a kind of magic ritual, an act of hope.’

Isabelle: ‘That very attitude (building in the face of threat) works as inspiration. By doing this you also build your capacity for resistance because the more you build the more you’re prepared to struggle for it, for the relationships you build. The solidarity here is amazing. Whatever you do - collect wood, bale hay - it’s never just for you. And the more you do it, the more strength it gives you to do it.’

A Heathrow ZAD?
John: (comparing the ZAD with opposition to Heathrow expansion) ‘For some of the earlier people who came here, inspiration came from the anti-roads movement in the UK in the 90s. Then, a climate camp came here, in the field next to La Rolandière, inspired by the British camp. After the climate camp several dozen people stayed to squat the land. There has been this very nice UK influence. Of course the UK, since the 90s, changed the laws around squatting and direct action. But with fracking camps, something like the ZAD is already happening again. Perhaps they don’t have the villages being destroyed that you could actually build an alternative world in. But around Heathrow, there’s plenty of villages that could happen in.’

‘The more you do it, the more strength it gives you to do it.’

Isabelle: ‘It would be a mistake to forget how much long, painstaking work it’s been to build the kind of relationships that there are in the ZAD. People didn’t arrive here and everyone was welcoming them and everybody thought it was a good idea. Actually, quite the opposite!

John: ‘It’s the same at Sipson, all the work that’s been done by people like John Stewart (chair of Hacan Clearskies anti Heathrow coalition) and Plane Stupid with Adopt a Resident. All that work that was done to open people up to direct action, like climate camp and, of course, the Grow Heathrow occupation. Maybe the terrain is even more prepared than it was here. The mantra here is, ‘no airport here or anywhere else’. There’s always been a resistance to NIMBYISM, which I think is also the case with the community in Heathrow.’

Isabelle: ‘It seems to me that the difference is probably the relationship to land that you will have because of the farming infrastructure. But I don’t think there is any less potential for a ZAD in Britain.’

‘It doesn’t take a lot of people to start something like this.’

To resist Heathrow expansion, Isabelle and John believe, will mean networking and mobilising grassroots struggles across the UK and beyond, including anti-fracking camps. The mobilisation could also include the squatting community and housing activists.

John: ‘It can become a thing about housing. In the midst of a housing crisis, you’re destroying how many houses?! And to build an airport is going to destroy people’s homes in the global south too because of emissions and climate change.
Isabelle: ‘When you manage to get the trade unions involved, it shifts the general image of the struggle because then they can’t make it out as naïve eco-activists versus the harsh reality of working people. You need trade unionists prepared to say ‘this is bullshit, it doesn’t create more jobs!’ In France a number of unions oppose the airport, including Vinci’s own construction workers and the pilots.’

Above all, resisting Heathrow expansion may mean mobilising a critical mass of London, the dissenting London that voted to remain in the EU, the London of the Occupy Movement and Radical Assemblies…

John: ‘If our struggle wins and becomes a big story, then it’s going to inspire people at Heathrow. It doesn’t take a lot of people to start something like this.’

In the ZAD, John, Isabelle, Yoann and everyone are preparing to get together ‘une grande mobilisation’ against the airport and its world for Saturday 8th October.

The ZAD occupation and mobilisation 
Grow Heathrow 
Reclaim The Power 
​