The Wave
The Wave- from Martin Hodson (JRI Operations Manager)
I thought I would just put up this personal account of our day at The Wave. JRI is mostly about thinking, education and advocacy on environmental issues, but I guess there are times when all of us feel called to take some action.
Since we moved to Haddenham, Margot and I have been very involved in Transition Thame and District (TTD), a local group looking into living a more sustainable lifestyle. The Wave began for us on the previous Sunday afternoon, when we had a special banner making session with TTD in the Scout Hut. In the summer the Climate Rush visited us in Haddenham, and stayed on the village green. They gave us some tips on banner making, and these proved very useful. We all drew around our hands, and then stuck the images onto the banner. The completed product looked great! The photo on the left shows JRI Director, Margot Hodson, with some of her parishioners and the banner.
Margot and I decided to go to The Wave on the bus organised by TTD. There were two buses, one from Thame and Long Crendon, and ours from Haddenham and Chinnor. A fair number from St Mary’s, Haddenham were on the bus with us, as were people from both the Baptist and Methodist churches. Our coach got a bit stuck in the traffic getting into London, but we made it to the meeting place in Grosvenor Square by about 11.45 a.m. The place was absolutely packed with people from all ages and backgrounds. Many were dressed in shades of blue, and there were lots of placards, banners etc. We had a long wait before we set out on the march, and were nowhere near the Houses of Parliament at 3.00 p.m. when the aim was to surround the Houses of Parliament and carry out “The Wave”.
On the way there I said to Margot that we would be bound to run into people that we knew. She said it would be a random collection of people and she was right! The first were newly weds Emma and Chris from London. Emma Morrice was the tour manager and compère for the Hope for Planet Earth tours, and had married Chris at the end of October. JRI was one of the organisations behind the massive national Climate Change tours, and and I was the tour scientist for all seven weeks (and Emma was compère for all seven as well!). Then Anna Pickering popped up from Oxford. Kaihsu Tai, Anna’s boyfriend, and a JRI Associate, was also there but we did not see him! A bit further along the march three of the girls from Climate Rush who visited us in Haddenham came past- so they could see how we had got on with banner making! We needed the banner to avoid getting totally lost in the crowd. Next along came Anne Owen from Marlborough, a former student on CRES and now JRI associate. Then Margot had a chat with Tom Honey. Tom was former Vicar of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry in Oxford, and is now Canon Pastor at Exeter Cathedral. Some years ago Sage went to Holy Trinity for Environment Sunday when Tom was vicar there. Once we got back home and we looked at Facebook it was obvious that almost everyone we knew was there. But in a crowd of maybe 60,000 (estimates vary) there was no chance of seeing everyone!
It was tiring, but well worthwhile. Whether it will have any impact on events in Copenhagen we will never know………
Martin Hodson