During the summer, I didn't have a permanent abode for a little while. As I couch surfed around London, I was without a Greenpeace group to call my own. The story has a happy ending. I ended up in Waltham Forest (more on that in another blog - complete with idiotic picture) - but I didn't let abodelessness get to me, I decided to make use of my time.
I approached my drifting lifestyle by terming myself 'freelance'. This was a pretty successful tactic because it got me invited to quite a few different group meetings around the city, but I also decided to take a different tac to campaigning and do something creative on my own.
The outcome was inspired (like most good ideas) by a few pints of cider and the immutable Neil Jones. While celebrating the end of I Love The Arctic day, Neil suggested, pint of real ale in hand, that we make an Arctic music video. I was delighted with the idea. Dave and Sebastian however, true to form, hit us with some gritty and well-informed realism about copyright licenses etc. Being a couple of sheets to the wind we forgot about it and went on to get excited about other things that we probably then promptly forgot about - but a seed was planted.
Where the idea to make a Rocky montage / polar bear parody came from, I'm not sure. But that was the fruit of Neil's drunken rambling and my desire to do some more creative campaigning. Having bullied some pliable friends into filming and getting up obscenely early to film a bear running around central London, I must have run a mile in that suit. I just about managed to do the yoga and lunges myself, but I had to employ another over energetic at-a-loose-end pal to do the gym work, and persuaded a musical friend to make me dinner and play the ukulele (double win) - then there was just the editing to do.
Video editing is pretty new to me, but having grasped a few tips, I set about my task with the kind of confidence probably typical of a non-too-techy Mac user, and I'm not going to call myself an expert now, but I don't think I made a bad job of it.
So, what's the outcome of all of this? Well, you'll have to see the video and judge for yourself. I guess there are two ways to look at it - either I spent 16 weeks over the summer (yep. And I was only homeless for 5 weeks, so it wasn't a particularly compact or efficiently organised project) being a bit of a prat but giving my thighs quite a lot of exercise, or you could say that I learnt new skills, persuaded non-Greenpeace friends to get involved in a crazy Greenpeace related project, and managed to do something a bit creative for the Save The Arctic campaign.
I’d like to think it’s somewhere between the two extremes.
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