6

World Savers

In this final chapter I’m going to pick out a few initiatives created by the actual people who plant the seeds from which the green shoots grow. To be clear, I’m aware there are hundreds of thousands of groups and individuals passionately and selflessly helping or healing but I’ve chosen these few because they remind me of who I was when I was young and had their spark. These people have the same expression I had in my eyes when I was eighteen. I’ve said that this book is to make me feel better and just being near people who radiate compassion allows me to bask in their heat. Love is catching, as is hate, but I chose them and their grassroot movements because I know they’re the real deal. They loosened the hold I had on my own self-obsession and allowed me to become part of the world. I can see why they glow – there is nothing as high-making as helping someone.

My Story

In 1969 I was in Chicago for the Democratic Convention. I lied about my age (you had to be over eighteen) to get a job working for the democratic nominee, Gene McCarthy. I was staying in the headquarters at the Chicago Hilton for the convention and one night, looking out of the window on to State Street, I saw a line-up of tanks with guns erect, rumbling their way towards the hotel from both directions. I recall turning to people inside, telling them that Otto Preminger (big Hollywood director at the time) must be directing a war movie because why else would there be tanks coming down State Street? I was wrong. They were coming for us. Across the street from the hotel was Grant Park which had turned into a political Woodstock, filled with sixties revolutionaries, shouting anti-war speeches through megaphones about fucking the establishment, banning bombs, civil rights, and chanting ditties en masse: ‘Guns, bullets, gas masks, LBJ can kiss my ass’ (the current president was Lyndon B. Johnson). It was a heady confluence of people like Frank Zappa, Angela David, Abbie Hoffman and the Black Panthers, with music provided by The Grateful Dead. What’s not to like? In the evenings, I’d stroll across the street to the park, thinking I was the coolest thing on earth as no one from my high school would have dared do this. That night, the party didn’t stop as the tanks pulled up in front of the park. There was a lull and suddenly Chicago cops spilled out of the tanks, with clubs swinging, beating the hell out of anyone they could get their hands on as I watched from the window on the twenty-first floor. The next thing was all the elevators on our floor opened simultaneously and we were invaded. I remember being dragged by my long hair into the elevator, down to the lobby and thrown into the street, where I was greeted by circling helicopters dropping canisters of tear gas. Richard Daley was Mayor of Chicago at the time, and was known as ‘the fascist pig’. He hated all things nonconformist and hippy and right here in the middle of his kingdom, he had a 15,000-strong flower-waving army from his worst nightmare, shitting on his turf. So he had called out his hounds to collect scalps.

I was totally innocent and couldn’t get my head around what was happening. This was my home town, Chicago, where I went shopping with my mother to the big fancy department stores and visited my dentist, who once a month tightened my braces. Now, I was running through the streets, past Manny’s Deli, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, trying to get away from the fumes of tear gas, which felt like a thousand nails being hammered into my lungs. Wet handkerchiefs were handed out to put over our mouths for protection, but nothing helped.

The next day, I got into the actual convention to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate and, before my very eyes, watched the electoral college at work. The room was the size of a football stadium and we all looked down on the state representatives with their teams. Someone on stage asked each state to cast their vote for either Hubert Humphrey (warmonger) or Gene McCarthy (anti-war). At the start, it seemed pretty straightforward but very quickly they started to turn off the microphones for those states that were about to vote McCarthy. You could see people yelling but couldn’t hear what they said. This meant the only votes heard were for Humphrey. I saw the headlines announcing the result in the stack of newspapers that had already been printed before the votes were in. I knew then that all those times at school I’d said, ‘I pledge my allegiance to the flag of the United States of America …’ it was a sham and it was around then, I decided, after waking up to the fact my country was corrupt, I would leave the US and go to the UK … the rest is history. By the way, I was arrested later and my father wrote a personal letter to Mayor Daley, thanking him.

For decades now, I’ve thought people younger than me were asleep at the wheel, politically – personalities as bland as milk toast, accompanied by music as bland as milk toast – and then suddenly there’s this new generation that wasn’t going to take shit any more. So some of these people are the world savers I’ve chosen.

If you find the world you’re living in a little distressing or depressing, I urge you to get in touch with a group doing something constructive in the world and join. Maybe at first go listen, then maybe go again for longer and meet the people involved and then take the plunge and go do some work with them. I promise you will never have to see a shrink again. Existential crisis over. You don’t have to go for the ones I’ve chosen, you can hunt down your own, but don’t get overwhelmed because there are oceans of volunteer projects. Choose the one that you resonate with because unless you feel an emotional tie you won’t stick with it. If you know someone’s pain, you’ll commit, and the great trade-off is that if you help someone, you feel good, so you’re helping yourself.

Here are my top four favourite world savers.

My First World Saver: Samos Refugee Camp

I don’t know why but for many years I’ve thought about working with refugees. Maybe because my parents were refugees and if they hadn’t made it into America, I wouldn’t be in existence and, worse, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Here’s how I got involved. Years ago, Juliet Stevenson (fellow thesp) told me she was driving a busful of clothes to the refugees in Calais. I remember saying even before she finished the sentence, ‘I’m coming with you.’

But I didn’t go and it has always niggled that I should have. So finally I called Indigo Volunteers who place volunteers with grassroots charities working in the refugee camps and told them to sign me up. The person on the phone asked where exactly I wanted to go to volunteer. I said I’d look at photos and get back to her – like I was choosing a holiday spa destination. And in that spirit, I clicked straight to Airbnb sites to find out what kind of accommodation was available. (Sometimes I disgust myself.)

There weren’t many delightful Airbnbs on the refugee islands so I asked them to find me somewhere to stay. From the moment I volunteered, I saw myself as an incredibly compassionate person; tipping higher than usual and generally being less of a bitch for the next few weeks until departure. On the way to the airport, I had to take a taxi because I was carrying two extra-large suitcases, crammed with items I’d stolen from hotels over the years. I announced to the driver I was bringing all this for refugees, waiting for him to fall to his knees and hand me a Victoria Cross. At that point I wasn’t aware that where I was going, they might not have a bathtub in which to drop the Hawaiian, ying-ling, patchouli and coco-infused bath bombs I brought by the dozens.

24 March 2019

EasyJet charged me four times what it would cost to go first class to the Maldives to get those two gigantine suitcases on board containing the very crucial Elemis moisturizers (all stolen) the refugees would need to survive. I landed at midnight in Athens, then rented a car to head for the Nea Kavala camp in northern Greece. The signposts were not in English as expected. I had to go from Thessaloniki to Axioupoli to Polykastro and those aren’t even written in English on a normal day and now they’re in fucking Greek. Who reads Greek? All at once, my Google map person started speaking to me not in Greek but with a Greek attitude, telling me to stay left but only if I felt like it and pick up some feta on the way. I drove most of the way on the hard shoulder as I like to drive on the wild side. Hours later, it had dwindled down to a dirt road, with high barbed-wire fences on both sides. I knew I was in serial killer country, especially when the road just ended at a locked fence. I’m sure I now hold the world’s record for the longest driven distance in reverse to Polykastro. I had joined a fellow volunteer group on Facebook prior to arrival, who were all from Norway for some reason. I assumed they were from Norway because (I’m not making this up) their names were Ase and Tuird. Ase had described our hotel a month earlier to me, saying, ‘It has a certain charm but during winter [which it was] they did turn off hot water … also no toilet paper.’

25 March 2019

I met Ase and Tuird and the woman in charge of volunteers the following morning, who briefed us about the ground rules of the camp. Nea Kavala is built on what was the local airport on a runway 1 km wide and 23 km long. Families live in single containers made of corrugated tin but we’re not supposed to say container, we should call it a caravan and not to call anyone refugees, they’re residents.

When you arrive, no matter how briefed you are, it’s everything you’d never expect; no matter how desolate you think this might be, it’s worse. My job that morning was laundry duty with Paolo, a wild-haired, earringed South American who I’d describe as a do-gooder junkie. He ‘island volunteer’ hops from one refugee camp to another and, on holiday, builds dams in Nigeria. He gave me step-by-step instructions on how to collect, wash, dry and return the laundry and I fucked up on every step because I was too busy talking to everyone who handed me their bag.

One guy from Iraq told me he had a PhD in physics and his dissertation was about how, metaphysically, all people are the same; all made up of particles. This notion threatened the regime so much, they had chased him out of the country and killed his family. I just held his bag full of laundry and was unable to move.

Afterwards, I peeked into some of the container/caravans and saw large families smashed into a tin shoebox, and when they’d spot me, they’d welcome me in for coffee with big smiles. I kept thinking we’re so similar, laughing about the same things, except their eyes have seen relatives and friends blown up and I’ve only seen it on television, which makes us universes apart.

Finally, it was time for lunch and not one of the Norwegians, not Ase or Tuird, asked me to eat with them. Paolo saw me desperately seeking a lunchmate but pretended he didn’t. I know, I know, there are people here who have had to escape death, crossing the ocean on a raft, and I’m sad because no one wants to have lunch with me.

I was hating myself a lot at this moment so I drove to a local supermarket and wandered up and down the aisles, sulking and munching items from the shelves. I bumped into a refugee who asked me if I was okay. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to share my pain that Ase didn’t ask me to lunch so I changed the subject, asking him if he wanted a lift back to the camp. He didn’t speak English but once we set off, he indicated with violent hand signals that he found my driving terrifying. A man who risked himself crossing the sea in an inner tube tells me my driving frightens him; that’s not a good review.

My afternoon job was working in the market; a big wooden storage unit filled with donated clothes where once a week people can come and pick out items, not with money but with a substitute called ‘drops’. Each family is given 1,500 drops a month to spend on clothes, toothpaste, toys, etc. I’m given instructions on how many drops everything costs, how to use the cash register and how to deduct it from their credit. I fuck this job up too. I try to explain, using mime, that I’m an idiot. I’m moved to bicycle rental, which is considered the easiest job, and also fuck that up. No one is talking to me now.

26 March 2019

Yesterday, I had asked Paolo if he wanted to have dinner with me (I was completely shunned by the Norwegians). He didn’t look pleased but he agreed to pick me up at my hotel at 8.00. I sat like Miss Havisham in the lobby and it was a no-show so I got a kebab and went to bed. This morning, as I was walking down the street, I was yanked out of my ruminations of self-flagellation by a Syrian boy, weaving a spiderweb of threads, who asked if he could make me a bracelet. I wanted to say, ‘What for? I’m an asshole,’ but he looked at me with such affection I thanked him. As he crocheted his gift, he told me when he was around eleven his family were told he had to join the military to help kill Kurds. To protect him, his parents hid him and his brother in the house for nearly four years. He slept in the day and maybe once or twice in all those years he went out in the night, but not far. Without any bitterness, when I asked him what he did all that time, he told me he helped his mother clean and took care of his baby brother, keeping him quiet so they wouldn’t be detected. I’m standing in front of the Syrian version of Anne Frank. Finally, the whole family left in two separate lifeboats. He made it to Turkey and waited for a whole day on shore, gradually realizing his parents weren’t coming. He was fourteen. They jailed him and gave him one potato a day for two years and from there he ended up in Nea Kavala. Finally, his family followed and they’ve started selling a few cans of tinned food in the camp. He told me how happy he is to be able to live in the container with all six of his family in one room and the 3′ × 3′ shop where he works the night shift. And this angel is making me a bracelet. I’m so not worthy.

The night before, I’d called the head of volunteers, requesting to be transferred to another refugee camp. I explained, I’m a writer and needed to see a variety of camps for the book. This was partially true but I also wanted to move to somewhere I might be more popular. Today she messaged me to meet someone later that night called Aslam. She said he knows everything that’s happening in every camp and could advise me. Probably she didn’t believe I was a writer but thought I was just a pain in the ass. I got to the restaurant early and there was one of the Norwegians already sitting there (who invited him?), who looked at me blankly.

Suddenly, Tuird starts talking to me, telling me an amusing story about vomiting the night before from eating bad liver. It’s the first time I’ve heard him say a complete sentence.

Aslam arrives, with long black hair, a moustache and the eyes of a madman but a very charismatic one. He tells me he has to go outside immediately because he won’t go in a restaurant that doesn’t let him smoke and he smokes a hundred cigarettes a day (told to me with such pride), so eating is pretty much out for him. Before his exit, seconds after his entrance, he asks me with a ‘fuck you’ tone in his voice, ‘What is it you want to see? People come here and look and then they go home and say, “I saw it.” As if it’s a brave thing to just look at it. So what you want?’

With my voice quivering, I tried to explain that I’m a writer and um … (I’m winging it), I write so … I’d like to see how everyone’s doing … I’d like to see what’s on, say, Lesvos, my friend is there and she says it’s more of an emergency over there (now I’m sweating and making stuff up) …

He breaks in. ‘And you think there’s no emergency here?’ I’m now becoming the idiot he thinks I am.

I say, ‘Nea Kavala seems sort of orderly and in control with all the containers in rows and everything … um …’

‘What you think is ordered? The women are too afraid to come out. There are rapes and knife fights, they kill each other at night; in summer they boil in the tin cans and in winter they freeze so what do you mean by it’s under control? On Lesvos it’s a mess but they still have a lot of hope. Here it’s ordered’ – he spits that word out at me – ‘but there is no hope. There is nowhere to go from here, it’s a prison. In Lesvos, they dream of coming here or to Europe, where if you’re caught, the authorities will pick you up and throw you out and you’re back here.’

I say, ‘Like snakes and ladders?’ He really hates me.

From this point on, everything I say, Aslam says the opposite; even when I say exactly what he just said, he opposes me, getting angrier and angrier.

My voice is now a squeak. He has been with me an hour and it feels like years. He finally tells me if I want to see what refugee camps look like I should look on Google, and leaves. At the end of the table were two women I hadn’t noticed before. I heard them talking about going to Samos (another island) the next day. Before I could get control of my mouth, I said, ‘I’m coming with you.’ They were thrilled at my enthusiasm and spontaneity, so agreed. Tuird looked relieved and I detected a smile.

27 March 2019

I met Holly and Molly (my new friends from the restaurant) at the airport. Aslam was also there again, who looked shocked and pissed off when he saw me.

The small plane was flown by a blind person. No one can hit the ground that hard knowing where it is. It turned out that Aslam and I were staying in the same hotel and in the taxi there I told him again that I was a writer and needed to witness with my own eyes what was going on to write about it. Looking on Google wasn’t the idea so I’d like to go into the camp. Now he was incandescent, saying I couldn’t just swan in there and see what I wanted to see, it had to be set up by agencies months in advance for permissions. No one could just show up and see a camp. I told him to wait and see. Just watch me.

So I checked into the hotel and was thrilled when Molly and Holly phoned and asked to meet me at the Joy Cafe down the road. Finally, I’m asked out. I walked there and the port is beautiful; blissfully unaware of the disaster in the hills where 4,500 people were living in garbage bags. (Now there are 8,000.) Tourists stroll, boats bob, the sky blazes blue and around the corner there’s mayhem.

I met them at the Joy Cafe and it was indeed joyful because they are my new best friends. Holly has a face like Barbie, framed in long golden hair. (This is the ultimate compliment – I loved Barbie.) Unlike Barbie, she’s incredibly smart and has a remarkable personality. I thought she was about eighteen but she must be older because she started saving people seven years ago on the borders of Bosnia where there was no shelter so everyone slept on frozen ground, in the snow-covered forest, watching helplessly as people froze to death. Holly’s job was going from person to person to feed those unable to move. They must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven as this beauty queen spoon-fed them. For the next two years, she worked in Serbia and Turkey and other checkpoints as a nurse, all the while searching the web to find volunteers and building up databanks of people who wanted to join in. This is why now she’s the main agent for seventy-three camps and supplies a steady stream of 746 volunteers a year. If there’s a sudden emergency, she has immediate access to doctors, ditch diggers, engineers, cooks, etc. I asked her how she could do this kind of job. She said she couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t do it. Her mother, she told me, fostered fourteen kids and now tends to people who are dying in her community. Holly said that, when she goes back to London, none of her friends ever ask what she’s doing (they don’t want to know). I asked her if anything was too much for her and she said there was one thing that still haunts her. She got very close to a pregnant woman at the Bosnian border and even though it was highly dangerous, snuck her and her husband into a hospital to have a scan. They watched the baby moving and her husband was ecstatic because he’d seen his first wife blown up by a bomb. Holly had found out later that the woman tried to escape when she was six months pregnant but, at the border, the guards had kicked the baby out of her.

I thought I’d ask what her philosophy was as she’d clearly become a wise soul from battling the tsunamis of life while I’ve been lying limp in the jacuzzi. She said she thought our brains are wired to think: shelter, safety, food. Once we have those, we don’t have anything to worry about and the brain is left with nothing to do and so we create problems, making up things to worry about, and then judge ourselves harshly; worrying about what other people think of us and that we have no value without material success. Working in Samos gives you confidence and makes you feel settled and peaceful.

Her friend and co-worker Molly told me she’s the happiest she’s ever been. Similar to Holly, in Samos she doesn’t feel stress from other people’s opinions of her. When she’s in London around people who complain about their dissatisfactions, she feels a constant low vibration of stress. ‘You pick it up without even noticing and then feel exhausted from them dumping their toxins on you.’ Even though these refugees need more than everyone on earth, with not even the basics of food or shelter, here she doesn’t feel that low vibration. Here she feels exhilarated. We sat in the Joy Cafe for hours and I loved basking in the heat from their hearts. These girls are the crème de la crème of human empathy and it’s catching. The nagging reviewer in my mind finally shut up.

We all went to dinner that night, in a taverna where the owner did a floor show about Pythagoras (father of geometry), who came from Samos and lived in a cave for some reason. The owner performed with such verve, I gave him a standing ovation. Pythagoras, it seems, had a maths cult following like Jim Jones but with equations about triangles, not Kool-Aid. You’d have to have been a genius to make this interesting but when you’re drunk and the performer is equally drunk, it was riveting.

Then Aslam entered, unwashed and smoking, and to my surprise, sat next to me. My sphincter closed. He started to warm up and talk to me because he could see that the girls liked me. He said that he likes to come into this particular place because he can smoke while he’s eating and no one minds. He told me he sleeps in coffee shops and calls his computer his girlfriend. I asked him what exactly his role was and it turned out he’s a fixer and a great hustler so the refugee charity give him a hunk of money because he knows how to get things done immediately. He has the phone numbers of everyone who can do anything: building playgrounds, opening temporary schools and digging sewers. It ain’t one of those big charities like Oxfam or Save the Children, where you have to go through hoops for permits that can take months. This is a feet-on-the-ground charity in its true sense and he is the great mover and shaker behind it, adored by all the volunteers. You don’t have to get a hundred famous people singing and dancing to save the world; Aslam, through a haze of smoke, knows how to fix an emergency.

28 March 2019

I can’t tell you the joy I felt when I got a message from Aslam telling me to come down to the lobby in ten minutes; he was taking me to the camp. This was like being chosen as High School Prom Queen. When I climbed in the taxi with him, he told me to ‘shut up’ when I got there, explaining that no one but no one is allowed in the camp unless they’re a medical person and I should consider this an honour. So we drove up a cliff, on a zigzag road, which refugees were climbing on foot, carrying plastic tanks of water they’d had to fetch from town. When we arrived, we got out and it was beyond shocking. Thousands of pink and black bin liners blowing in the wind, held down by ropes. Behind each tent were hills of garbage and clotheslines indicating life was still going on. You heard kids laughing as they played kick the can. On our way past the thousands of plastic abodes, a kid around five was carrying two large plastic bottles filled with about forty litres of water each. Aslam tried to help but the kid held on. Then he gave them to Aslam and took my hand, leading me down the hill so I wouldn’t slip. His life has come to a dead end, who knows if he has parents, yet he was holding my hand, smiling. When he got to his home, he said to me in English, ‘Thank you.’ They have to queue for four to five hours for food and if it runs out, savage fights break out for scraps. There is one doctor for 7,000 residents; there is a hospital but the waiting lists are months long. If you do manage to get in, there are no face masks, gloves or much sterilization. When it rains, the whole mountainside of plastic-bag tents gets washed away and they have to build it up again. The camp was equipped for 600 refugees; now there are 7,000. Imagine, these people getting off their rafts after escaping genocide, full of hope and happiness. Then they’re picked up by the coastguard, given a plastic sheet to live on or in and are pointed to the mountain. I can’t even picture the heartbreak when they realize they’ve come in for more torture. The local Greeks can’t help them because tourism has dwindled, they’re broke and there are no jobs; it’s a lose-lose situation where everyone is screwed.

On the way back to town, I asked Aslam why someone didn’t build toilets and showers. He said he had built a number of portaloos and showers but the Greek mayor of Samos made him tear them down, complaining they were blocking the road. What road? The real reason was she wanted it to be as deplorable as possible to discourage more refugees from coming. Their other choice is to be massacred at home. I asked how he deals with the local politicians and he told me he’s gradually wearing the mayor down. No one else would have the skills of mind-fucking and diplomacy rolled into one. If he does the same job he did on me, she probably assumes she’s an idiot by now. Aslam is the only one in charge of distributing resources, not just on Samos but on a number of other islands. Where was the UN or the EU? Not here.

Because of Aslam (now I’m in love … again) there are green shoots growing even on this disaster of an island. In a matter of a few weeks, because he sent out smoke signals, there are now pop-up shelters and a newly built women’s centre run by (bizarrely) an ex-dancer from Broadway shows like Chorus Line and Cats. The cafe in the women’s centre is pristine. I had tea with a beautiful young woman called Princess, with dyed, long, perfectly coiffed purple dreadlocks. Princess told me she uses up all her allocated water to keep her hair clean. She told me her husband was a pop singer in the Congo and wrote a song as a cover for a video showing the police beating up neighbours in the town square. The police came to her house and demanded they hand over the footage. The husband claimed he didn’t have it, they didn’t believe him and shot her daughter in front of her. Princess was standing in front of me like any young twenty-year-old, wearing an Adidas T-shirt, and the only thing giving away her state was that her legs were shaking, constantly. An Afghan woman told me the authorities took away her eight-year-old son and tortured him for a week, before returning him. He’s with her now but so traumatized, he screams all night and never leaves the shack. They’re waiting for a therapist who will never come. Last week, her friend in Kabul was kidnapped but her father had no money to pay the ransom, so they hanged her.

I had no idea what to say but wanted to do something rather than just stand there with my mouth hanging open, so I asked if she and her friends wanted me to teach them Pilates and mindfulness the next day. (It’s all I’ve got up my sleeve.) They all said ‘yes’ without spitting in my face which I would have done to me in their situation.

29 March 2019

They all showed up today; twelve women, some in burkas, saris or designer sportswear. One woman had a shirt on that said in English LIVIN’ THE LIFE; hopefully she didn’t understand.

So they all got on the yoga mats and I made them do sit-ups while pulling up their pelvic floors. After a few, I asked them if they wanted me to stop because it was too straining for them. They politely said that they were fine. It slowly occurred to me that these women had probably walked through at least six countries with their luggage on their heads and I’m asking if they’re tired after ten sit-ups? They could probably do a thousand sit-ups with a grand piano in each hand. Then we did mindfulness and they became calm even though I had horror shows running on a loop tape through my brain.

Later today I took them for manicures. I figured if I was in charge of shallowness, I’d go all the way. Holly and Molly thought it was a great idea. I took them all to a beauty salon, where they spent a great deal of time choosing colours as if it was just a day out with the girls. I have photos of them posing with their new nails. They glowed as they posed like hand models.

Anyway, thrilled with their new (mostly gold glitter) nails, I took them for cappuccinos where we ran into Aslam, who didn’t know what expression to put on his face when the women showed him their nails. The women were so humble and dignified as they accepted the coffees and then, without complaint, they departed to walk up a mountain in total darkness. As they walked off, they kept looking at their nails. I hope I did a good thing.

30 March 2019

Aslam gave me a tour of the rest of the island, showing me schools for all ages that he had set up, while Holly had found volunteer teachers through her databank who taught English, maths, IT (Google paid for a tech centre), history, etc.

Aslam was beginning to get my sense of humour, and I got his which was as dark as it comes. He introduced me to his friend from Afghanistan, Imad, who was now a volunteer with the legal team who were helping people get residency to stay in Greece. Imad had escaped and, after a terrifying ordeal, got to Berlin. Miraculously, though he’s off-the-chart smart, he got himself into university, studying political science. The details of the terrifying ordeal were that his raft sank halfway across the sea between Turkey and Greece, carrying forty-six refugees including babies. They threw their luggage overboard but when the passengers were up to their knees in water, he and about eight others jumped into the sea and pulled the raft by ropes. When they got to land, he radioed the coastguard for help but they ignored it. Finally, he flagged down some local fishermen to save the half-drowned people and on arrival at Immigration each were thrown a plastic sheet and told to walk up the mountain to the camp. After twenty days in the camp, he escaped, walked to the Macedonian border, slept in the freezing forest and then managed to find a bike which he rode through the mountains in Serbia, finally getting to Hungary where he was thrown into jail and tortured, escaped and got a lift in a truck going to Germany, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the tale of how he got to Berlin.

He kept a diary and I promised to try and get it to publishers; so far, no publishers have accepted it, even though it’s raw and chilling. It’s called The Jasmine Inferno – The Journey of Death. If there are any publishers out there interested, I have it.

31 March 2019

My last night in Samos and we all went for the last supper. I was trying to make time slow down because I was with people I loved and didn’t want to leave them. The cherry on the cake was that Aslam decided to tell me his story. He said he was in Iraq at one point, walking through the desert, when he was given a lift by a helicopter. While it was flying, it was hit by machine-gun fire and they nose-dived. He said he was screaming and vomiting while the guy next to him was shot. Then he stopped and when I pushed him to tell me what happened next, he announced that he was lying, he’d made the whole thing up. See what I mean by a dark sense of humour? I left not knowing anything about him, but I found out no one else did either. He’s truly crazy but a hero. I’m still in touch with Holly and Molly and signed up to go back at the end of April 2020.fn1

My Second World Saver: GEN (Global Ecovillage Network)

While I was visiting Findhorn (see chapter 1, Community) I met resident and President of GEN-International, Kosha Joubert, who said her vision was to help establish thousands of ecovillages globally from traditional villages in third-world countries through favelas in South America to established or newly built, state-of-the-art communities where people simply wanted low-impact, high-quality lifestyles and an alternative to a culture of consumerism and exploitation.

Kosha said, ‘These ecovillages are living laboratories, pioneering alternatives and solutions to enable villages, regions and nations to fulfil the Climate Agreement.’ If that’s not doing something to save the planet, nothing is. No one planned this community-led movement; instead it emerged from the hearts, minds and hands of courageous people who decided to choose the road less travelled.

The ecovillage movement can be seen as an antidote to the destructive consequences of a dominant world view. The ‘market society’ simply doesn’t work for the vast majority of people: it can never lead to anything but a degraded environment and a disastrous and widening gap between the rich and the poor.

GEN was established in 1995 and so far it’s helped create more than 10,000 communities in 100 countries around the world, with some of the lowest recorded carbon footprints per capita. GEN promotes the idea that, ‘Every village and city on the planet could become an ecovillage or green city. In a world that is changing faster and faster, we will not be able to react together quickly and effectively without being connected to each other by this web of kinship, the invisible glue that binds us.’

In other parts of the world, governments have taken the model and run with it. For example, in Senegal, GEN helped build a few ecovillages and the Prime Minister was so inspired, he had 14,000 more constructed. He then made a personal commitment to promote ecovillages across the African continent. Kosha says, ‘It’s time to heal apartheid not in one country but within humanity as a whole.’

Here’s How it Works

When they are invited to a prospective community who want to be part of the network, they first listen to the inhabitants’ visions of the future and what they’d like to see for their children. Once GEN is sure that the candidate-village’s heart is in the right place, they get to work. Depending on each community’s diverse needs, they’ll help build and train residents to convert to solar energy, use renewable energies, only use regionally sourced materials, to increase biodiversity, practise organic farming, permaculture, water conservation and reforestation. One of their great achievements is that they’re using new ways to recycle waste effectively. One day shit, the next day a garden of Eden – that’s recycling at its finest.

But what GEN insists on before the first shovel is even lifted is that everyone agrees to its ecological, economic, social and cultural principles. They do, however, ensure that local traditions and rituals remain untouched. The idea is to integrate new innovation with traditional wisdom … picture a shaman with an iPhone.

The Five Principles

  1. Each member of the community has to work for the well-being of the community by cultivating transparent and inclusive decision-making. Not judging each other but trying to understand all points of view.
  2. The model for decision-making is not a top-down pyramid shape, with a big boss at the top, but a circle where everyone has a say and there’s mutual respect. Everyone takes the blame if something goes wrong and reaps the rewards when things go right. GEN teaches various forms of conflict resolution and peace-building skills designed to bring the people closer to true democracy.
  3. Gender equality. Imagine the surprise on the faces of men from countries where women are kept in the root cellar (except at feeding and breeding time), when they find out that unless they give women equal power in decision-making, GEN won’t be involved. ‘Ha ha’ is all I can say. GEN’s philosophy is that ‘every community is only as good as its ability to honour feminine qualities: care, compassion and the ability to listen’.

    GEN also won’t tolerate discrimination against any religion or culture – everyone is accepted.

  4. Each community has to decide for themselves how land ownership is organized, whether businesses should be run privately or cooperatively, whether the income will be shared or separate and who will look after the members who are ill or elderly. These villages can’t be designed by developers, they have to be built by people with a common vision.
  5. Each village creates its own economy, but it has to be based on fair trade and ethical systems of exchange. Some use bespoke currencies or Time Banks where you work a certain amount of hours for someone using your particular skills, then they owe you that many hours working for you. (I like this idea … So if I get someone who gardens to do two hours’ work then I will probably have to give them two hours of comedy. Also, if they garden well, I’ll be funnier, otherwise I’ll just crack a few old jokes.)

The Big Deal About GEN

Research on ecovillages concluded that if only 5 per cent of the EU were to engage in effective community-led climate change adaptation initiatives, carbon savings would be sufficient for 85 per cent of its countries to achieve their 2020 emission reduction targets.

Results from Following the Five Principles

GEN are also transforming refugee camps into ecovillages through a branch called EmerGENcies, who help coordinate and organize basic needs: food, water, shelter, health and sanitation.

Then there’s a NextGEN youth-led global network teaching the next in line to continue the movement of creating and running ecovillages.

I wanted to span the market of ecovillages, to get a taster of what they might have in common. I went to an ecovillage in Cape Town, South Africa, and an ultra-sophisticated one in Ithaca, New York.

Oude Molen, Cape Town

To get there you have to drive down a motorway lined with townships on either side; piles of corrugated tin shanties, which killed me with guilt as I sat in an air-conditioned car drinking a latte.

Oude Molen is located where there was once a prison for murderers. If they were deemed insane after thirty days, they were sent straight to the hospital, do not pass go. If they were diagnosed as not insane, they were in for life, maximum security. From these chilling beginnings, a sustainable little village has sprouted with fifty-five businesses employing 300 people. The guy who started it, John, had to fight the government to stop a development of gargantuan shopping malls (who’s going to shop at Zara and have their nails done? Residents from the neighbouring township?). In 1984 when the new government took over, they forgot (on purpose) to budget for these mental hospitals so there were no more resources. John said he’d take care of the people who remained in the hospital and they let him. Good riddance. First of all, he released the patients (brave) and then taught them how to plant seeds and harvest food.

When he first took over, the boys from the nearby townships vandalized the place, stripping it of metal and copper. John caught some of them in the act and, rather than turn them in, asked what their interests in life were. They said, ‘Cars,’ and he proceeded to teach them about fixing cars – so instead of raiding them, they learnt how to repair them. There’s a very successful mechanical repair service there now and they’re making more money than they did by stealing them. In the village populated by 300 people, there’s now an internet cafe, a theatre, vegetable stalls, a backpackers’ lodge, a school, a medical centre and accommodation for 300 people who come here to do ‘shadow’ work. (A glorified internship programme, anyone can show up and shadow someone running a business to learn anything from farming to carpentry to coding.)

The nearby township has a million residents with hardly any schooling and zero jobs. This ecovillage is filling the gap; small step by small step but still steps. People wonder why there’s so much violence in Africa, throwing up their hands in a ‘what do you expect?’ gesture. Well, here’s your answer – give people somewhere to go to learn a skill along with teaching them regenerative farming and they will come.

Some of GEN’s Other International Projects

GEN works in a similar way to B Corp (see chapter 2, Business), giving official accreditation after careful scrutiny to a community that is truly walking the eco talk.

I didn’t visit these but they’re worth mentioning.

In Favela da Paz, São Paulo, Brazil

Slums take up 24 per cent of Latin America, usually with no electricity, no running water and gang violence 24/7. The garbage hasn’t been collected for twenty years.

Jardim Angela favela has 800,000 residents and in the 1990s was ranked by the UNO as one of the most brutal neighbourhoods in the world.

A local guy called Claudio Miranda started playing music on tin cans. He taught hundreds of street kids to learn the ‘tin’ and eventually wrote a hit, ‘Favela da Paz’. The money came pouring in from everywhere. It was suddenly like ‘Favela’s Got Talent’. From the funds they built a solar shower which quickly made headline news. From then on he taught the locals how to plant seeds on their roofs to grow food, and now, from an aerial view, you can see green in the favela for the first time. Even more of a miracle, the government has now ordered that the garbage be picked up. Then they joined GEN.

In Kitezh, Russia

GEN helped create an ecovillage dedicated to nurturing foster children who have been abandoned by their parents. Everyone in the community acts as a surrogate family to the kids and gradually, through unconditional love, prepare them to leave when they’re emotionally ready to face the real world.

In Sekem, Egypt

Dr Ibrahim Abouleish turned a hot, arid desert into fertile land by building a huge underground irrigation system connected by canals. Once the soil was rejuvenated, farmers from all over Egypt came once a month to learn how to farm without harm and follow the ethos laid down by GEN. He says, ‘Economic success is based on brotherliness rather than competition and egoism.’ Sekem has opened schools from kindergarten to university for students inside and outside the community. Here they do research in medicine, pharmacy, organic agriculture and economics, and they create new products to adapt to green technologies. Sekem has a medical centre that cares for approximately 40,000 people from surrounding areas.

In Natoun, Togo

This village was in a barren desert where nothing could grow. Menfolk had left the village, unable to deal with the poverty and crying children, leaving the women to fend for themselves. It’s now run by a woman who started an initiative, an organic school to teach agriculture, water retention, etc. Once the husbands who left town got wind of how successful the community was, they returned (what a surprise).

In Otepic, Kenya

Similarly, women couldn’t speak at the village meetings until one of them piped up and suggested that they made an attempt to enrich the soil. Turns out, she was right, and now 80 per cent of smallholder farmers in the area are women. Someone said (maybe even a man), ‘When you reach out to a woman you reach out to an entire village.’ Now those women organize women’s groups on family planning, AIDs and domestic violence. They also organize peace activities such as football matches between different ethnic tribes and gangs.

As I mentioned, I want to move to an ecovillage. But I think you might know by now, it won’t be in a favela or with a tribe but one of the five-star ones. You can’t completely change a leopard’s spots. Especially mine.

Visiting Ithaca Ecovillage

On 9 July 2019 I went to Ithaca, an ecovillage in upstate New York under the banner of GEN. Again, like at Findhorn, I was expecting a patchouli-oiled, feet-smelling, bean-curd munching hippy commune. A very conservative-looking woman greeted me – almost twinset and pearls – who was the founder of this twenty-five-year-old intentional community. She developed a new way of rural planning rather than using the old suburban model which is where a developer buys a parcel of land and lines the streets with wall-to-wall homes, to create the most profit. Ithaca ecovillage has no streets to take up room because you park your car in one of the two large parking lots just outside the community. (They also share cars.) The homes face each other, connected by a squiggly sidewalk with small areas for gardens, playgrounds, shared bicycles, trampolines, toys and places to mingle in the middle. The people have the option: they can socialize out front or, if they want solitude, out the back door they’re facing endless vistas of fields, mountains and lily-padded, bull-rushed ponds equipped with communal kayaks. Social in the front, freedom in the back. It’s just as financially viable as any suburban scheme because now that there are fields available, farmers use them to grow vegetables which they sell to the city folk of Ithaca, only ten minutes away.

You don’t buy your house, you buy shares, and if a building needs repairs and a resident can’t afford it, everyone pitches in to what they call a ‘social justice’ fund to cover the cost. If something breaks down in your home or you need something, you go online and so many volunteers show up you have to go online again and say, ‘Problem solved, don’t come over,’ to stop more coming.

Some of the residents told me they moved here because they wanted to know their neighbours and let their kids run free. It’s multiracial and multigenerational so the elders can babysit the babies. There is no discrimination against women or ethnic groups and, if there is, people are asked to think about departing. It’s a mini-mall of writers, software engineers, cleaners, architects, circus performers, professors, scientists – but they all have to contribute time for two hours a week towards working for the community: washing dishes, mowing, repairing, administering, whatever your calling is. Everyone has a small allotment for growing fruit and vegetables and there’s even a communally shared cat.

There are three neighbourhoods, Song, Tree and Frog, each differently designed and made of natural stained wood (one looks like a fantasy Western town). Each of the hoods has a gigantic solar panel behind it, providing heating, air conditioning and electricity. Homes have zero net energy and they’ve generated 13,000 kilowatts in three years, which is equivalent to what a nuclear power plant produces in one day. This is where I may end up living; in a smart home in a smart neighbourhood.

(PS I haven’t told my family.)

My Third World Saver: The Kindness Offensive

I heard about this particular movement and was struck by the audacity of the whole idea so I called the founder, David Goodfellow, and found him to be another star in the world-saver stakes. Since he started the Kindness Offensive, he’s raised millions of pounds, fed over 5 million people and given away warehouses full of goods to various causes. His story is a jaw-dropper and I don’t say that often.

In 2006, his mission began as a way to mitigate his depression. He told me he had spent the last ten years at home, paralysed with fear, feeling as if the walls of his room were a tight-fitting coffin. (Immediately I felt I was with a fellow tribesman.) His childhood friend, Robert, told David about his bizarre hobby; he would cold call various businesses and talk the salespeople on the phone into giving him products for free. He did it by striking up a friendly conversation, making the person laugh and creating a fast-food kind of camaraderie. Basically, he schmoozes them until they break; I call it hustling but David called his friend a ‘phone whisperer’. At some point, because David wasn’t leaving the house to go anywhere, Robert taught him and some friends the art of phone whispering. He told them when they call to be aware of their facial expressions, posture, tone of voice and attitude, even though they’re on the phone. One day, Robert flung a Yellow Pages on the table and told the group to choose a random number. They chose a local Domino’s Pizza, Robert did his magic and within thirty minutes they had a free pizza delivered. This guy had a calling to call. After that, David practised tirelessly, mostly getting phones slammed down on him, but on one glorious day a miracle happened and he got the pizza. A successful call can take hundreds of tries and take weeks or months but eventually, like with any great skill, you get the knack; 10,000 hours, you’d be an artist.

Over the years, he and his friends slogged away, filming then critiquing each other. He told me the house started piling up with pots and pans, blenders, a vibrating massage chair, a luxury fish tank and a water-based vacuum cleaner. Word went out about what they were doing and friends and family started to make requests. The hustlers were now being hustled. So far, so self-centred.

A few more years down the line, they got the idea to whisper for strangers and as a social experiment they went into the streets and asked people what they needed, calling it a ‘Kindness Offensive’. It held a kind of ‘in your face, punk’ charm. The next offensive was on 3 August 2008. They set off for Hampstead Heath, asking people, ‘How can we help you?’ They got eighteen requests, one of them being a guy who said he didn’t have any money but wanted to throw a birthday party for his daughter. The next day they ‘whispered’ to various companies, calling themselves the Kindness Offensive, and a week later they had all eighteen gifts. For the guy with no money, they contacted the Moscow State Circus, who offered not only ringside seats for Chris’s daughter’s friends but a chance to train with the circus before the show.

Later, a request came from a soup kitchen asking for badly needed food so David and friends somehow ended up whispering to the CEO of one of the largest food producers (they must have been really good by now), who agreed to send twenty-four tonnes of food. None of them knew what that kind of weight meant but pretended to. When the delivery arrived, the football-stadium-sized lorry took up the entire street and, when decanted, the food filled every last crevice in the house so they had to use neighbours’ homes. The BBC, hearing about it, turned up and filmed them giving food away to passing strangers, churches, food banks, the Salvation Army and the original soup kitchen, who were now flooded with food. You can imagine, they suddenly got a lot of volunteers. After that they were on a roll, whispering like Olympians; distributing toys and gifts to major hospitals, children’s homes, charities and care homes. They received an award from the then Prime Minister for giving the highest number of toys away to kids in hospitals.

David’s favourite project was when he got some of his volunteers to go to Trafalgar Square and pretend they needed help after dropping their shopping, falling over or trying to lift a pram upstairs. If a member of the public assisted them, all the volunteers would gather around and sing, ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow …’, hand them champagne, flowers, and throw streamers before quickly disappearing, leaving people thinking, ‘What the fuck?’ I’m sure they’ll remember it for the rest of their lives.

I asked David if his people ever use phone whispering to get something for themselves. He said, ‘Actions have consequences; everything you do adds up. If you do evil, well, you do the math.’

When he gets someone on the phone, he tells them that if they donate toys, flowers, blankets, food or whatever, the world will be a better place. The world needs heroes and this is their chance to be one.

After doing thousands of random acts of kindness, he said that, ‘if you get it right, it affirms the humanity and worthiness of both the giver/performer and the receiver/recipient. As a performer of the act, you feel worthy and your value is unquestionable. As the recipient of the act, your worth and humanity is affirmed by someone giving you a gift without expecting payback and it’s a glimpse into an understanding that there are kind people in the world, that not everyone is frightening or out to get you. As someone who suffered from depression who was haunted by questions like “Am I good enough? Should I be here?”, it offered me an alibi and purpose.’

My Random Act of Kindness

Just before Christmas I joined David on one of his Random Acts of Kindness, blitzing the public. We all had to meet in Camden Town where I was handed a hard hat and neon vest (their costume) and pointed to a mountain of flower bouquets that I was told to load on to the Kindness bus. (He whispered well to score this particular vehicle.) It’s a red double-decker bus called the Number 42, because Douglas Adams famously said that 42 is the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’. He wanted the interiors to look like a 1950s American diner; the juxtaposition of a British icon with a classic American interior. They whispered hard, over a three-year period, becoming intimate friends/phone buddies with a guy in Germany who had the last remaining Wurlitzer jukebox in the world. Obviously, in the end he couldn’t say no. Also aboard the bus is a vintage replica Coca-Cola cooler which you cannot buy in the UK, a gigantic antique gumball machine, two Wesco Spaceboy bins, a flux capacitor from the Back to the Future films (given to them by George Lucas) and a bar. Aside from all that, there was nowhere to sit because the bus was packed wall-to-wall with flowers, toys, boxes of chocolates, cosmetics, perfume, clothes, sports gear … a department store on wheels.

So the bus travels around London, making stops, where you simply jump off and give a passer-by a gift. At first, I was a little shy just handing someone random a present and having to explain it was free. We’d both stare at each other as if it was a joke of some sort while they tried to figure out what the deal was. I’d have to say a few times, ‘No, it’s free … It’s for you because you’re you … No, there is no money involved.’ Then I’d see their faces kind of melt into a mile-wide smile, some people looked in shock or they teared up, and then I’d jump back on the bus. Well, if you want to get high on happiness, you can get no better hit than this. I eventually went crazy with rampant joie de vivre, chasing people down the street to hand them the free stuff, just to watch their eyes as they went childlike on me, like it was their first Christmas. Once in a while, people brushed my gifts aside or told me they didn’t want anything and I could feel a ‘Fuck you, it’s free’ swirling up in me. Just as I would catch someone’s joy, I’d catch these hardened people’s anger and hated them for it. David advised me to say to myself, ‘The recipient didn’t choose to be chosen, it was a random act and I’ve co-opted them into a contract that they did not sign up for. Now I’m upset they aren’t paying the debt I forced them into owing me.’ That’s why it’s best to do this thing as a hit-and-run, don’t hang around and expect something back as then it’s not an act of kindness.

In my whole life, I don’t remember giving something and not expecting something back. Maybe not in concrete terms but there would always be a slight residue of feeling they owed me something later. We blitzed care and children’s homes and hospitals that day. Sometimes we’d just leave the gifts at the reception or drop a gift at everyone’s door. I never got tired even though it went on for ten hours because I was five years old again and wanted to play. I would do this every day of the week and suggested it, but David can’t because it takes him months to whisper for the stuff. I forgot about that part.

At least now I know there’s a bus out there somewhere in London that I can get on when I’m low. Imagine if this was a regular service? We should applaud and appreciate all acts of kindness, whoever does them and however they come about. I asked David how he keeps his motives pure. He said, ‘I can be an asshole. I can be as thoughtless and polluted as the next guy. I don’t go around thinking lofty thoughts and wishing mankind well, but none of that stops me from trying and succeeding to be kind. There is no point in waiting for the pure people to sort everything out. Trust me, they’re not coming.

‘Life is not a rerun, we don’t have stunt doubles or understudies, we’re it. The universe doesn’t happen to us, we are the universe happening. It actually matters what we do. That’s what I’m doing when I phone whisper.’

My Fourth World Saver: Extinction Rebellion – XR

I chose this as a world saver because the people I met at Extinction Rebellion reminded me of who I used to be before I was dragged into adulthood, kicking and screaming. I recognize the same passion and innocence in their eyes as I had in mine. I had the same spirit to change the world before my lights went out. (They’re back on now.) To me, nothing is more energizing than a rebel with a cause. At the few meetings I attended (thinking I totally blended in – totally deluded), in my mind, I was back at Berkeley University, right in the vortex of what was happening; finally, I felt like I was at the right party, at the right time.

I invited one of the founders, Tamsin Omond, over to my house. Juliet Stevenson said we should meet and I obey whatever she tells me to do. Tamsin had brains, wit and beauty; I usually hate people with those qualities but not in this case as she walks the talk. I told her about my riot days and how intoxicating it was to be part of a protest movement. Rebelling was so addictive and in the end I couldn’t tell if I was doing it to get a high from the fight, rather than fighting for the cause. I remember being at an anti-war protest at my university and how delicious that adrenaline tasted when caught in the midst of mass madness. I remember going berserk at a policeman, screaming at him that the war was his fault, waving a Vietnamese flag in his face. It turned out he wasn’t doing anything, just out taking a stroll. He must have thought I was insane.

The same day, at our first meeting, Tamsin asked me to her wedding and I accepted immediately. It was planned for the first day of the ‘International Rebellion’, 7 October 2019, on Westminster Bridge at 12.00 p.m. The idea came to her because she wanted to ground the rebellion not in anger but in love. I told her I would dress as the mother of the bride so if I was about to be arrested, I would say I thought I was coming to a wedding; no idea about the rebellion bit. Tamsin has my sense of humour and laughed.

On the big wedding day and first day of the rebellion, I had to fight my way through the throngs of people to where the marriage was to take place. A large mob of us were serenaded by a brass band as we waited for the bride, Melissa MacDonald, to show up. It turned out she was in Parliament Square where her friends had set up a beauty parlour. Her bridesmaids were primping her for her big day; curling her hair, preparing the bouquet and getting her into her wedding dress. Canon Jessica Martin (from Ely Cathedral) married them as helicopters circled above. We sang, threw confetti and cried as Tamsin kissed the bride under the drone of the helicopters.

In the next rebellion, which was supposed to be in May 2020, among other events Tamsin was planning to find fifty people who wanted to get married during the protests so she’d be a kind of XR wedding planner. The couples could choose their location for the wedding anywhere in London, places you could never afford in real life: London Bridge, Trafalgar Square, St Paul’s … the world would be your oyster. I imagine the police would feel helpless, not wanting to disrupt anyone’s Golden Moment. She wanted to call it the Love Rebellion. (Now it really was starting to remind me of the 1960s.)

Even if you think some of the past XR actions may have gone too far and at times pissed off the public, look what they’ve accomplished in a few short years. They have 1,120 groups in sixty-five countries. The UK alone has over 300 groups. They made visible something that was being ignored by the government and mocked by the press.

I would never have known that each day 100 million tonnes of man-made, heat-trapping global pollution is pumped into our atmosphere, raising the temperature to unprecedented levels. Ninety-three per cent of extra heat is going into the oceans creating storms, each more powerful and destructive than the last. More water vapour is rising from the oceans causing downpours throughout the world, which trigger flooding; eight of them were once-in-a-thousand-year floods in the US in just the last ten years. Also in the last ten years, 1.3 million species representing about 20 per cent of total species have been made extinct. The melting of the Antarctic is causing rising sea levels which may eventually cover Miami, New York, Mumbai; so buy galoshes if you plan to go to any of those. Or if you’re planning a holiday in the Maldives, bring a snorkel. So I salute XR in their attempt to focus our awareness on something significant for a change, in a world where we’re so easily distracted.

This is their mission and they do what they can through disruption. I asked Tamsin how she cools her engines from battling with a public who either ignore or ridicule the facts of global warming. She does daily meditation, otherwise she finds herself getting too ‘grabby’ and desperate; falling back into the ‘I want, I want’ motif, which I know so well. The practice stops her from thinking about what’s going to happen tomorrow or in six months (which only whips up the anxiety) and lets her just focus on what’s going on now. Also, she says – and I agree – mindfulness helps build up that muscle for compassion like lifting weights at the gym for hard abs. ‘The pay-off is when you dole out compassion, it feels good. To be grateful for what you have makes you feel better.’

Using her ability to calm the mind and self-regulate emotions, she trains the XR teams in non-violence and how to stay calm and slow down when things get hectic. ‘When you lose your mind, you make mistakes and that’s when hot emotions kill the cause.’

Extinction Rebellion follow a code of ethics. (God bless them, it’s more than we did back then when our only motto was ‘Kill the Pigs’.)

Extinction Rebellion Principles

  1. 1. We have a shared vision of change. Creating a world that is fit for generations to come.
  2. 2. We set our mission on what is necessary. Mobilising 3.5 per cent of the population to achieve system change – using ideas such as ‘Momentum-driven organising’ to achieve this.
  3. 3. We need a regenerative culture. Creating a culture which is healthy, resilient and adaptable.
  4. 4. We openly challenge ourselves and our toxic system. Leaving our comfort zones to take action for change.
  5. 5. We value reflecting and learning. Following a cycle of action, reflection, learning, and planning for more action. Learning from other movements and contexts as well as our own experiences.
  6. 6. We welcome everyone and every part of everyone. Working actively to create safer and more accessible spaces.
  7. 7. We actively mitigate for power. Breaking down hierarchies of power for more equitable participation.
  8. 8. We avoid blaming and shaming. We live in a toxic system, but no one individual is to blame.
  9. 9. We are a non-violent network. Using non-violent strategy and tactics as the most effective way to bring about change.
  10. 10. We are based on autonomy and decentralisation. We collectively create the structures we need to challenge power. Anyone who follows these core principles and values can take action in the name of Extinction Rebellion.

I asked Tamsin what past events she loved the most and she said when they pulled a giant pink boat down Oxford Street. She said that rather than more flag waving and raving about the horrors of climate change, this was an act of pure irreverence. You can make people numb by throwing endless facts at them, using words we (mainly me) don’t really understand: fracking, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, phosphorus loading … what do they look like when they happen? I can see Tamsin’s point, that in contrast to the almost incomprehensible barking on megaphones, the ‘Pink Boat’ event was a protest with humour and yet still made a statement about mass consumerism right in the heart of its epicentre, Oxford Circus. One of their principles is not to be self-righteous or worthy like the people who oppose them, who believe in their own rhetoric; that their truth is the real truth and everyone else is deluded. ‘Worthiness is the enemy.’

This generation, in general, has far more wisdom than mine did. They realize that an endless craving for more isn’t going to make them happy and this taking more than giving back is what’s depleting the planet. They’ve got their eye on the Bigger Picture.

So there you have a close-up snap of four of the most inspiring enterprises I discovered on my journey and, boy, has it been a learning curve.

‘All of life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly’    – Martin Luther King Jr