Where was I? Oh yes, Invitations! Well, you can imagine the flutter on the powerlines when not one, but (count 'em!) Three invitations came old Seagullz way! We rented the services of a Much Smarter Gull (cost us half a day-old burger and a leftover Kiddies Vodka RTD can - bloody roguish price if you ask me, and the MSG did a couple of donuts on the way out, that's how happy she was, I blame the burger of course) and we discovered that the three Invitations were actually to the Same Event! Talk about disappointment....
They were all to attend a "Let's Not Dig Up the Brighton Mall" meeting.
Unsigned.
We tried to contain our excitement.
Successfully.
But, as things went, over the ensuing week, Sister Euphonia Gull and your faithful narrator, Elder Jonathon L Seagull, just kept thinking about this strange event, and, it being a lazy Saturday afternoon anyway, we just went along anyway, to sit on the fence outside, and use our Sensitive Gullz Hearing to spy on the meeting. And there was always the chance of a great Kiwi Afternoon Tea afterwards - Sister E is very partial to those sausage roll thingoes.
As things turned out, we were sorely disillusioned. For starters, we didn't have to worry about tuning up that Sensitive Hearing. The Language! The Volume! The Negativity! that poured out of that room could have powered half a hippy camper bus if we had hooked up the genny.
There were arguments about business. Most of the room seemed to believe that the Private Sector was some sort of Nest of Demons, who would be better off Exorcised, than inhabiting shops in the Mall. This is a very curious attitude, because, as Sister E said to me sotto voce, halfway through one of these rants, "who the hell else do these guys think manages to feed them every day, except the Wicked private Sector?"
There were arguments about Vehicles. Some of the carless types in the room were convinced that Vehicles were Evil, and that this extended to their drivers, and that we would all be better off Walking or Bussing everywhere. One genuinely deluded type seemed to imagine that in the 40's and 50's (that was clearly, to this one, a Very Long Time Ago) everyone was driving around in cars! As Grandad Theosophat Gull (who had joined us on the fence outside, to see what all the helpless laughter was about) said - those days, everyone Was walking or tramming, and nobody could afford a Car!
He then said - let's imagine this crew carrying their own food, on foot, from the farm to their home, once a day!
No container trucks! They're evil vehicles.
Sore feet!
Dire effects on Cows' Life Experiences as everyone needed more Shoe Leather!
About here, we cracked up a bit, and someone inside the meeting looked out and tried to shoo us away - said we were Interrupting an Old Lady who was Reminiscing. Well, she might have been, and we might have got a bit squawky, but the unshaven bloke next to her was doing a much better job of shouting her down than we were. Such discourtesy! Even the Tuesday Press said so, just in reportese. We did quiet down then, but.
So what was this August Gathering about?
Well, the funny thing is that we never did really find out. One lady did offer to lie down in front of the roadmaking machinery, as a Physical Protest once Legal Options (which generally involve hiring expensive lawyers, and we did detect a little shudder that ran around one or two in the room as they recalled their own experiences of that) ran out. Well, that sort of lie-in did Rachel Corrie a lot of good, didn't it.
One thing that everyone was Agin was a Road. Why?
Because it would destroy Their Space and let those Evil vehicles in. The brave Councillors present (and really, we did try to clap to encourage them, but wingz just don't make much noise) who gave up a perfectly formed Saturday arvo to listen to this
Because it would lead to Unsustainable Development. The elderly gentleman who spoke about this did ramble on a bit, and I must confess to missing most of it - Grandad T had listened intently for three seconds and then fallen quite asleep. That's usual for him, but he then fell clean off his perch (corro iron fences are narrow at the top, believe me) and we had to undertake a Nemergency Rescue.
Because it would be Good for Business, and therefore we must Oppose it, because.... well, colour me pink and call me Polly, but isn't Business the whole point of a Mall anyway? What is any Mall but a collection of Shops? We did detect that very few Meeters had much direct experience of Business - there was this little curl of the lip as most speakers pronounced the word. Except the chair, who has a little business in the Mall. Which the Road could be Good for. So why...go figure, you can't make this stuff up...
Because - well, this one is really a bit hard for simple Gullz to figure out. One speaker, who kept standing a good bit of the time (in gullz, that's a Classic Dominance Posture), late in the meeting, started talking about Social Role Valorisation which seems to be
"the attainment and/or maintenance of valued social roles for people with disabilities and other groups who are held in low esteem in society, as a strategic defence against their systematic devaluation."
People with Learning and other Disabilities! Now call me old fashioned, but all that talk about Social Role Valorisation sounds like a thinly veiled insult to the good people of the meeting, doesn't it?
But the real beef we had was the beef we didn't!
After all that, after all the yelling, Shouting Down of Elderly Ladies, Presentation of Sustainable Alternatives, Let's Lie Down in front of Heavy Machinery, Let's subtly insult the rest of our fellow Citizens, and Let's not even thank our Stalwart Councillors at the end - after all that...
Everyone just Drifted off, like sand down to the Spit.
No Bloody Afternoon Tea.
No Sausage rollz.
Good grief - that's why we hungry gullz Went in the first place!
