Monday rush hour in Nottingham and a bunch of Greenpeace activists from the local group visit the Shell garage on Carlton Hill in Nottingham. This is not the first time we have visited this garage and will probably not be the last. We were drawing the attention of drivers and passers by to the fact that Shell want to drill for oil in the pristine waters of the Arctic, further adding to climate change and risking a major spill that would be impossible to clean up.
I went in and informed the manager that we would be on the pavement outside and handed over a letter for her to pass on up the ;supply chain' of management, which she agreed to do. We had leaflets and also posters which we held which said 'Shell: Out of order'. So we placed ourselves at each entrance of the garage and started talking to the motorists and passers by. Many did not stop but lots more did and were very receptive to what we had to say but we began to notice a trend - drivers were signalling to pull in to the garage then changing their minds. It seemed to be from one direction of traffic as well - then it clicked. They were driving past the garage and seeing our posters and thinking the garage was shut and driving on. Ha ha. This was an unexpected bonus.
We ended up telling people 'yes, the garage is open'. One lady commented that she thought our posters meant the garage had run out of petrol. 'Yes', I said, 'Good isn't it?' Come half past six the rush hour had died down considerably and we had thought of going home but when we looked at the leaflets left we found there were less than 20 so we decided to stop and get rid of them all. We were down to one leaflet when the assistant at the garage came out 'Can I have a look at your leaflet?' So she sat with us and had a cigarette and read the leaflet while we told her what were doing and why we were doing it. She took the leaflet and took it back to the manager and showed it to her.
High five all round and we went home, very happy at a job well done.
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