Melissa Kite
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‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is.’
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ That accusatory tone again.
‘This,’ I said. ‘I’m handing out leaflets telling people it’s happening.’
‘But you’ve got to stop it!’
‘Yes,’ I said, trying to be patient. ‘I realise that.’
Even the builder was a pain to start with. We had been in Guildford shopping, when he suddenly spotted the box full of leaflets, fresh from the printer, in the back of the Volvo. ‘This is horrendous,’ he said, reading the leaflet. ‘We better give these out right now!’ And he started scrabbling about in the boot. ‘Quick! Come on! We can hand them out to shoppers!’ And he started thrusting them at random passers-by.
‘Hold on,’ I pleaded, ‘we don’t have that many of them yet.’
‘If you ask my opinion, you need to print more of these…Excuse me, madam, please join the campaign to stop the ruination of the Surrey green belt…’
‘Oh, you reckon?’
‘Yes, you need loads…Save the green belt, madam?’
‘Loads would be nice.’
‘Trust me, you need thousands. One box won’t be enough.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I realise that.’
‘And it’s no good just giving them out here…Excuse me, sir, please join the campaign to save the green belt from greedy developers…You are going to need to put them all round Wisley and the surrounding villages too.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I realise that.’
‘These big developers don’t back down easily.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I realise that.’
‘Why on earth haven’t you put them in the post office?’ he berated me.
It was the same when I stood on the pavement outside my home in Balham to protest about the waste of taxpayers’ money on huge, ugly road signs advertising where the jurisdiction of Lambeth Council began and ended.
Instead of signing my petition against the £1,000 signs they had paid for, residents stopped to shout at me about why I wasn’t doing anything about the cracks in the pavements. Or the lack of zebra crossings.
This is why people who run local campaigns are battered, tired, strung-out individuals.
This is why developers say things like ‘we will wear you down’, because they know that ordinary mortals cannot sustain the endurance test of taking the flak from all and sundry as they protest day in day out for the years it takes to defeat aggressive speculators. Forget Big Society. Knackered Society is more like it.
Mind you, Wisley Property Investments Ltd hasn’t come across anyone as weird and neurotic as me yet.
My capacity to enjoy a fight and make a thorough nuisance of myself is pretty limitless.
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