As far as I know....
It was back in 1990, a 23-year old married mum of two type of Sparkie grew more and more angry. Now this was the year of the Community Charge, levied by the Conservative Government of that time. This resulted, on a personal level, in a £700 increase on our household bills, when I wasn't working, because I had just given birth to Sparklet minor. So we went from being a bit skint, to being threatened with losing the house, malnutrition kind of skint at one fell swoop.

Well, something had to be done, so I did it. Yeah, a bout of shouting outside a Victorian town hall should be just the fella to stop all this nonsense... Right...

Step 1, Phone Mum-in-law up and arrange to park Sparklets, telling her that I'm just off shopping..

Step 2. Phone Mr Sparkie and arrange to meet him, He's always been fond of a ruck as well, so this is right up his street.

Step 3.. Sparkie is on the bus, on her way for the first decent bit of public shouting since her times with CND.. woo hoo! etc.

Step 4. Meet up with Mr S. we both note that although there's loads of camera crews, a good four or five lots, they're not doing an awful lot of shooting. They're mostly hanging about about smoking and drinking tea.

So we walk round the Town Hall,looking for a way into the building, with vague plans of either disrupting the meeting or getting ourselves arrested in order to highlight our plight, and the fact that we can't be the only ones in such financial brown and smelly.

By the time we return to the front, there's loads more people, singing and chanting. I ran into an old school friend, so we happily gossiped and sang and shouted along when required. then we noticed that a little door had opened in the front of the Town hall, so along with the hundred or so others present, we stampeded to the door, which promptly slammed shut again.

Re-energised by this, (oddly) We started jumping on the spot and singing. Not noticing of course, that it had suddenly got very very bright, from all the lights that the suddenly awake camera crews were using, we were all there for ages, until an announcement by the council advised us that we had to queue at the other side of the building to get into the public gallery of the meeting. So this kind of broke up the party, and we all went our separate ways home..

The next day, I got a phone call from my own Mum.

"Sparkie"
"Yes Mum?"
"Did you go out last night at all?"
"I might have done"
"That's good, I'm pretty certain that you haven't got a twin, so at least you didn't try that one again"
"Was it on the news then? Outside the town hall"

"Yeah, I'd got the film on, until your Nan, and both Aunties called, then your uncle Colin, and your other Nanna, and a couple of the girls from work rang, then both of your brothers, then your Mum-in Law rang.. I was on the phone for hours, and I missed the end of the film. I'm proud of you though. But can you let me know next time?"

The quality shouting didn't help in the end, they still chased me for the money 9 years later, when my Mum paid the courts off, because she didn't want another relative in Holloway, her Nan being a Suffragette and all.

And my Mum didn't tape it. And there's nothing on YouTube, possibly because it wasn't that dramatic, no one got hurt etc..
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Mon 15 Jun 2009, 12:13, 2 replies)

Crikey, I didn't think I was THAT young.
So I just found out that I'm the same age as your second offspring. Once again I feel young and inexperienced in the ways of he world, and now I'm going to look up "Community Charge" on wikipedia and get a bit of backstory to this. You get a click for my lesson in paleolitics.
(Helixdaunting, Tue 16 Jun 2009, 0:55, closed)

:-)
Thank you very much!
Don't worry about the inexperience.. I'm ancient and I still don't know most of it!
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Wed 17 Jun 2009, 8:51, closed)