Notes from the campaign 111

The joys of collecting nomination signatures, from a fellow Green Party activist.

I wanted to share an amusing moment or two from the campaign. well, it was a downright soggy day for it, but I had a couple of wards worth of signatures to collect to stay on target ahead of the nominations deadline. The response is generally very good and most people are happy to facilitate our standing candidates. One gets the occasional, "I'd rather not", or "I'm a bit busy right now." But I'm quite the advocate of a soft sell approach and have had some people come back after initially saying, no thanks, "Okay then".

Today, in Harlesden, I had a man turn down the offer and duly close the door only to be questioned by his wife. I could hear her reprimand him behind the closed door and whilst in the middle of the next signature she came back after me, snatched the clipboard out of my hand and said, "I'm signing for the Green Party! I'm signing for the Green Party!" Then she went back into her house with clipboard in hand, "and I'm going to get his signature too!" In fact, the husband did refuse, but the neighbour who had just witnessed the scene with me dared not!

Today, I had another signatory do an amazing rendition of all the drum bass on the street (yes, it was Harlesden :). He was complaining about the way his neighbourhood had changed in the 30 years that he'd lived there, and apparently they only get one hour's sleep a night due to all the music. Then he launched in to a rendition of the kind of noise he had to endure. He was quite advanced in years but could have gone for a recording contract there and then!

Then, two days ago, another example of one family member coercing another -- the head of the house originally said no, then the daughter intervened and although she wasn't resident there thrust the board into her mother's hand and said, "Only the Greens will keep the streets clean and green!"