Blending into the view ?

Every now and then in this self-obsessed period of my life I'm drawn back to the world outside. This morning two factors contributed to that happening: the trip to the supermarket before breakfast, and the sudden realisation that there was a Trident Nuclear Submarine sailing quietly towards its Loch Long base right in the middle of the view from my bedroom window. (You can tell the Trident missile subs by their very long thin bodies - sorry: hulls)

Later, after a better day of some sunshine, some conversation, a pleasant walk, a dinner made by Mr PB and online Compline to finish with, I found I'd been tagged in a Facebook post by a former pupil. The post was about the 40th anniversary of the march to Greenham Common, where the US Cruise Missiles were stationed; the FP was sure I'd have been there at some time. Together with the sight of the sub in the morning, this took me back to the memory of the trip I made to Greenham for some action involving women (wimmin!) from all over. I was teaching full time, but I was picked up after school by a friend and we were off on the ferry to meet a bus in Glasgow. 

We drove through the night, arriving at Newbury as it got light. I can still remember some vivid details: the stiffness as we climbed down off the bus; the food I'd taken with me (a hard boiled egg and a marmalade roll for breakfast; another roll with cheese salad for lunch; some chocolate) and couldn't face eating until I'd had a lie down in a tent (kindly vacated by a total stranger to let me lie on her airbed) and some warm water that tasted a bit like Lapsang Souchong because it had been boiled over a wood fire; the then unfamiliar smell of cannabis...

We had been joined by another lady (we thought of her as an old lady - she was probably younger than I am now) who lived in our part of the world. Elizabeth wore a Dot Cotton belted poplin coat (brown) and little laced shoes, and her tightly permed hair was dyed bright red. Together the three of us set off round the perimeter fence. Occasionally a soldier inside would shout at us to go home, advising us that dykes like us weren't welcome. (Elizabeth took issue with this, assuring him that we were "respectable married ladies with children". She was a joy.) A police officer on a humungous horse came along the narrow path and pushed us into a jaggy bush, which felt unfriendly. We found another camp - at Blue Gate, I think. We met women we'd come across in Dunoon, at a big action at the US Submarine base in the Holy Loch, and embraced like old friends. It grew sunny, more welcoming. Someone told us there was one pub down the road where the landlord would serve us (it being fairly obvious what we were) and we headed there for a pint and the shot of a proper loo. 

The bus returned for us in the early evening. I slept on the floor for some of the way back, as I was desperate to lie out; I shared the floor with some other women and a large black labrador. When I got home I was filthy, starving and exhausted. But I felt more alive than I can remember. I also felt somehow better about Thatcher, politics, living in a garrison town, because I'd tried to do something. 

Maybe that's what's wrong with now. The powerlessness of sitting at home waiting for what happens next really gets to me - and then I look out of my window and see a reminder of another powerlessness: the subs may be "ours", but they're not "mine" and at the moment we have to put up with them being stationed in our firth. It's not good. 

But I've really enjoyed remembering that weekend in 1984...