We're Walking In The Bear

As I stood there by the road leading out of Dorchester, stamping my feet to keep warm, doing my best to peer around me through the nostril holes of the polar bear suit I was wearing, the thought hit me - what am I doing here?  How did life in all its infinite complexity combined with the myriad decisions, small and large, that I have taken transpire to place me here, now, on the morning of the nineteenth of January 2013?  And do I look as absurd as I feel?

This is not to say that I was feeling like life had somehow taken a wrong turn. Far from it. In fact, this particular event, this wearing of a polar bear suit on a wintery Saturday in a provincial West Country town, was in some ways a defining moment for me.  For it marked my passage from being a concerned but essentially passive citizen to being a fully-fledged Activist. All the past months of running the slightly tongue-in-cheek Activist Club at Pilsdon, the attending of Greenpeace West Dorset meetings, the ‘Save The Arctic’ presentation I gave at Pilsdon, all have led to this. For the first time, aside from the occasional march through London streets, I was Getting Out There and Doing Something. I will be able to tell my grandchildren, gazing in awe at their hero grandad, that yes, I got out of bed early one Saturday to make a stand in my polar bear suit against those fossil fuel companies recklessly drilling for oil in the Arctic. And they’ll ask me in their childish wonderment, Grandad, what are polar bears? And what’s oil?  

As you can tell from the photo above, I was not alone in my protest against Shell, the first of the oil companies to make Arctic-drilling a priority.  Other Greenpeace supporters came out to brave the snow and ice and stand with me outside the Shell petrol station, holding banners to let the general public know something about it, should they not already. Somehow I was the one selected to wear the bear suit, something about “oh yes, we all had to do this on our first protest”, and given a placard saying “Honk for the Arctic” which I was to wave in the direction of passing motorists. I tend to think this isn't particularly realistic behaviour for a polar bear but what do I know, I’m new to this. So I buckled down and with each honk I gave a cheery wave with my giant paw.

After an hour or so we moved on to our next target, a Shell petrol station in the nearby town of Bere Regis, where excitingly I had a snowball thrown at me from a car - in anger! OK it’s not exactly up there with Gandhi or Mandela, and the snowball missed by a mile anyway, but still.  I have faced an icy projectile and survived to tell the tale.

The staff at both of these petrol stations were quite familiar with us due to all the protesting the group had done already last year, and the Dorchester crew were friendly enough to tell us they hoped we didn’t get too cold. The Bere Regis duty manager was a little more brusque, reminding us that we had to keep the protest off Shell’s forecourt due to the nationwide injunction Shell took against Greenpeace, and complaining that last time she had to deal with customers asking her what it was all about.  This is in fact what we were hoping for as with customer-power it’s more likely she will raise it with her bosses, keeping them aware of Greenpeace's continuing opposition to their actions.

It all ended peaceably. No shots were fired. No police were called. Lots of folk tooted their horns and waved, we think in support. Lots of other drivers no doubt lodged the words “Shell” and “Arctic” together in their grey matter for the first time. A few took the chance to display their disdain for those hypocrite tree-huggers who don’t know how the world works. And we all only got mild frostbite.