Four go mad in Dorset
Wednesday 11th April
The sun was shining, the bananas were ripe and the van thoroughly packed, when slightly depleted but otherwise unbowed we met up at Newton Abbot railway station. There wasn’t much of a plan, compared to that devised for the original Devon ride we had intended. There was more a vague sense that something had to be done about Dorset before our prior engagements and the Foot & MAFF crisis caught up with us. After the final announcements of the maize locations in early April it became clear that Devon and Cornwall were to be free of GM trials for the summer. So our nearest local hot spot was the unfortunate area between Weymouth and Dorchester. They’d been lumbered with 5 farm scale sites, 4 maize and one oilseed rape; the planting of which was highly contested by the local school.
We
were going to help publicise a public meeting in Weymouth on the 17th
and raise awareness before the crops were planted. We had not prearranged
venues or places to sleep. Our first and only point of contact was John
the maker of Tree Free Hemp Paper, who by convenient coincidence lived
on route in Lyme Regis. Our leaflets were to be sent there, hot off
the Hedonist press in Bath, for collection. After that point we would
be relying on spontaneity and generosity to help us out. We
weren’t disappointed. We arrived in Lyme Regis late afternoon to be
received into the vast fantastical den of the old Malt House, which
John kindly put at our disposal. Valiant tinkering with our second hand
video player failed to bring it to resurrect it when it refused to perform
during a test and it became clear that we need to borrow a VCR if we
were to do any guerrilla cinema on the quay that night. John had an
amazing and vast collection of books stacked to the roof beams but no
kitchen, let alone a video. 
We checked out potential spots for a venue and tried borrowing a VCR from random townsfolk but to no avail. Undaunted, we decided to celebrate having finally got Lifecycles on the road by going to the local indoor cinema ourselves instead.
Thursday
We passed a slightly chilly night on pallets next to a pre-war table tennis table in the Malt House, and despite the damp we were invigorated by the sheer style of the place. The morning was occupied with packing the trailers, final sewing of flags and logistics while we waited the delivery of our leaflets. They arrived a couple of hours later than we had expected and we had started to worry that they would never arrive but when they finally turned up on our hosts amazing hemp paper we were over the moon.
We
donned our costumes and became the Gene Genie, the Biohazard Babe, Patents
On Life and the GriM Reaper respectively. At 4pm we finally said our
farewells and set out with solar panels firmly lashed on and Seize the
Day blazing from our stereo. Between the four of us we had distributed
the projector kit, sleeping stuff, a change of clothes and a guitar
(there was no room left for tents). We had a trailer with each bike
and a spare seat on the tandem (in case of the acquisition of hitch
hikers).
Dorset isn’t the flattest of counties and we’d calculated originally for at least two more riders, so it was heavy going. We arrived in Bridport just before it got dark and stopped outside a Chinese Restaurant to get some food and to hand out leaflets. Within four minutes we’d been offered two places to stay for the night. Providence sent us the lovely Fran, who’s outrageously enthusiastic kids were most impressed by our general silliness. She had matters to arrange but agreed to meet us in the square outside the George pub, an establishment already recommended to us by John. It far exceeded expectations. They were most entertained by our costumes and received the leaflets with great curiosity.
General banter pointed us in the direction of Mark, who promptly marched Ben round to his house to borrow his son’s video. The poor kid awoke to find his Dad and a six-foot genie trying to extract his player from the stack of Thomas the tank engine videos. Meanwhile back in the square the Tiger and the Babe had sorted out our projection screen by hanging it between two signposts in front of some benches while Death and Fran's kid’s leafleted the departing audience of the local arts centre.
The Genie got to work on the electrics and Death went to see the studio Fran’s friend Dan had offered us as a crash space. The Tiger entertained everyone with guitar and songs until the set up was complete. We had to hold the tandem in place to ensure smooth generation but we had a quality audience of about fifteen people and everything worked. We played Stop the Crop, the undercurrents video about genetic engineering and Britains first mobile pedal powered cinema was officially up and cycling.
The first shift of supporters went home, but Dan the instrument and furniture making / boat building animator left us the keys for his studio. We had a few conversations with passers by and played bits of undercurrents videos waiting for pub chucking out time. The number of drunks increased with our exhaustion, and still there was no sign of a mass exodus from the George. At eleven thirty we abandoned it as a lost cause and with the Genie talking techy stuff to the local electrical repairs guy, packed down. The studio was great, and complete with another table tennis table. By the time we’d dragged the bikes and trailers up the stairs it was well past one o’clock, and we were exhausted. We slept straight through our eight forty five alarm.
Friday
The benevolent Dan joined us first thing, bringing us crumpets, tea and conversations about communities. We went food shopping and tried to formulate a cunning plan. We rang Helen in Weymouth who’d been courageously battling the proposed GM sites since the beginning. She was a little concerned about us ruffling the towns more conservative feathers but would be happy to receive us despite short notice. So we had 18 miles to cover, we were leaving after 2pm but we had somewhere to stay.
We were sad to leave the fine folk of Bridport but the coast road seemed a pleasant enough prospect. We got to test the ‘baton factor’ of our leaflets on the highway, with a couple of cars winding down windows to enquire about us and receive one while on the move. The weight, the inclines and the developing aches meant we weren’t getting any faster, but we were catching a lot of peoples attention and leafleted a busy playground and the villages we passed. We were met in Weymouth by a beaming Helen, her camera and a dinner, which wasn’t chips!
"Never
let it be doubted that five campaigners in a kitchen
can
fold nearly a thousand silly shaped hemp paper leaflets,
indeed they’re probably the only people that have ever tried"
– a tired lifecycles cyclist.
We checked our beloved projector (which to our great distress, had taken a freak roll in the back of one of our trailers while coming down a hill) by viewing the digital photos we had taken on route and talked crops and sewed till midnight and wallowed. At some time after midnight, all over tired and unable to sleep, we settled down on the floor of the office in the attic and one by one dropped off.
Saturday
Aching somewhat we had a quick meeting to decided where to go next and what need to be done first. Two of us headed into town to purchase food for the next couple of days and to tried to buy a VCR player or a full-size VHS camcorder for the cinema set-up. There was no breakthrough on the video front but we did managed to arrange for accommodation in Dorchester. One of us cycled ahead without a trailer to find and photograph the proposed sites for the GM crops. The rest of us produced an insert for our leaflet to highlight the location of the trials......
Sunday
Woke in the attic to something that kept threatening to be sunshine. Deaths wings were finally finished, the Genie whipped up a quick Littlemoor specific poster on Helens computer, the Babe made lifecycles 'number plates' for the backs of our trailers to ensure the web adress would get seen and we went through the familiar ritual of re packing and face painting. Our first stop was the Littlemoor housing estate, which is blessed with a trial site on either side of its back gardens. We lost a flag and found a Ruth, a local who was up for copying and distributing our poster. We pottered surreally round the maze of 80's closes handing out leaflets to the Easter car washers and dog walkers. Then we set ourselves on the road to Dorchester, which is virtually a guided tour of the areas proposed GM sites. We stopped to photograph them and put up warning signs, and arrived in the town just after 5pm. Our host was a hunt sab, his heavily pregnant partner, 5 cats and a rabbit. He took us in for tea while death and the tiger photocopied the Dorset inserts for our leaflet down the bemused Spa. When enough were ready to distribute Neil cycled with us round the park and the highstreet, we even braved the funfair, but despite the late evening sun the holiday must have taken it's toll; everywhere was amazingly quiet. We returned to a fine meal and a private showing of the Indymedia Prague video, it seemed pointless to attempt guerilla cinema in deserted streets.
Monday
Another morning, another attic. We left early having not needed to disassemble everything the night before, and retired to the park to dodge the waterfighting kids and facepaint. We were all suffering somewhat from exhibitionist overload. The state of constant interaction our costumes generated was effective but exhausting. But we got some really interesting conversations going with people in the park and went on to face the highstreet. This was loads tougher, with most people quite focused on shopping and a random few being openly hostile. We persisted for a couple of hours before heading off in the direction of Weymouth. We stopped at the out of town Tescos to leaflet and reluctantly aquire a few provisions, causing much consternation to their security but near support for the manager. We picniced outside a driveway quite close to the nearest crop and were met by the farmer's mum on her way out to walk the dog. We had an entertaining conversation about anarchy, education, immigration and swallows and headed off down the back roads, determined to avoid the roar of the main route we'd taken on Sunday. Spring was in the air, the Babes knee was worse than ever, but we leafleted the houses we passed and chatted to a few folk. The site of a shooting range and the herbicide spraying going on in the raveged land we passed made us mad and sad, so we decided to detour via the sea for a some gentle leafleting and a paddle. The seafront was calm, we talked to the curious, marveled at the sky, played tunes on the stereo and ate chips. Our final venue of the tour was Johnny on the Littlemoor estate, a friend of Neils' who'd agreed to help us out. Neil popped round too with some cans, and utterly knackered we vegged out to the sci fi genetixs movie Gattaca (purely in the nature of research you understand).
Tuesday
Johnny had headed out to work before we were up with instructions to just pop the key through the door when we were done. The babe went off on the bus to rescue the minibus from Lyme Regis and the rest of us slowly packed and painted. On her return we went to the estates row of shops and started to leaflet.
