Well, it was a generally high octane day yesterday. A 6.30 sharp start, troops ready and down to the site. Activists and anrchists are not reknowned for their organisation skills and that’s not an unfounded assumption. We mainly floated about the front gate aimlessly and obviously a disjointed band of hippies taking the piss and generally being useless. Thank god the security are worse than us, or maybe they’re on our side who know’s because come 8.30 am this happened.
We were in, funtimes. Still it was like a dog with a stick, he’s chuffed he’s got it, but really doesn’t know what to do with it, once it’s in his chops. So we scampered about looking for, ‘core samples’ of sub-standard concrete that was rumoured to be making up the foundations of the refinary. We didn’t really know what substandard concrete looked like, how to get a core sample or how to analyse it. Despite these trivial facts we demanded to see the forman, health and safety and mooched about looking at stuff. More importantly we were stopping work, disrupting stuff and having a right giggle.
We split up, reformed, argued over if we should take up the offer of a onsite tour and generally didn’t know what to do. That was until 53 year old firecracker, maura decided to block lorries. Well, it all kicked off then, the garda (police) got involved, taking three of them to move her, everyone piled in stopping lorries, taking the piss and generally being a pain in the arse, something that comes naturally to me.
It got heated for a bit, I was picked up by my throat and the old bill tried to bundle Dave into a copcar without charging him with anything, which could’ve meant taking him off for a good ol’ fashioned kicking. Just look at the homo-erotic look on the little piggy wiggy faces.
Somehow Dave slipped outta the garda’s burley arms like a well greased willy, still don’t know how, it was a bit weird, and the subject of a lot of discussion. Then as quickly as we were in, we were out, to a round of applause and thirty rounds of tea and sarnies (they love tea and sarnies here, a good sign). It was a fun day, a confusingly easy invasion, but a good days work. Although I left my coat somewhere I think.
And I still need to sort my dole out.
Shit.
Tags: activism, bellanaboy, bertie ahern, corporation, county mayo, eire, gas, Ireland, marathon, oil, protest, rossport, rossport solidarity camp, shell, shell to sea, statoil, western ireland
