When you arrived, there were few people. Some of them were playing badminton in a foursome and immediately greeted you warmly and offered you a place in the game. You replaced two adults (who went off to check on preparations) and began to share giggles and ineffectual shots, plus plenty of misses, with two pre-teen girls who were dressed very unsuitably for sport (this being a party, after all). When
Sensing movement, Woby* grabs the hem of the Bard’s cloak. The rush pulls Woby in and makes terrifying MRI scan noises as the energetic Bard flips upside down, makes the necessary secret hand gestures, and thereby gets sucked through the angelic wings. It’s not ideal to go through a portal by holding onto somebody else, but Woby hasn’t yet managed to get those hand gestures right, much less perfect a
Woby* stumbles over the entrance step, wrong-footed by a couple squatting right inside the bloody door, grabs onto the barbed-wire-and-fairy-lights-festooned tailor’s dummy to steady themself, and realises that the door blocking couple aren’t thoughtless bastards, but had been pushed to the back of a very large crowd. Sid Vicious (his portrait) sneers over the whole club as usual and the pineal eye in Woby’s head feels Sid’s scorn. The place
We’re in The Orchard cafe for their vegan tea event. There’s 7 of us, in a chock-full cafe (tickets sold out weeks ago), and we look around in wonder, interested to know who are the vegan-or-vegan-curious of Worthing, then? There’s an all-ages crowd, including some very glamorous young folks, a sprinkling of beard-and-tattoo dudes, at least one person who has been vegan since the 1970s – and a baby whose
What do you imagine a green / eco activist to look like? Be honest, now. Brighton crusty? Bristol tree-dweller? Shouty placard-bearer? We all trade daily in violent shorthand, stereotypes and imagined Others. Media headlines (“Gay alcoholic mother of two”; “Euro-Mega-Boss”) teach us to do it. Sometimes our families and neighbours teach us, too (“that Polish builder opposite”; “sarky auntie”). A Transition Town Worthing meeting severely (and joyfully!) undermined our expectations of an