Tuesday 27 October 2009

What have the Camels been up to?
Radical Rumours Report Oct 09

Helen's done mediation for CSG and making final touches to Member's Pack, Gem's joined Secretarial Group and is trying to do a finance visit for the Liverpool community.

We put on a talk entitled Introduction to Housing Co-ops and Communal Living at a rented commune in north Ipswich, called the Spinney. It was designed by Birkin Haward as his family home, and the idiot who now owns it wants to demolish it and build a sheltered housing complex. So they're in the process of getting it listed by the twentieth century society, and we're goading them into coming to a gathering so that if the landlords planning gets rejected, they can buy the place off him and be a proper co-op!

The talk wasn't hugely attended but it boosted our confidence in holding such events, we drew spider diagrams and sold booklets, and enthused the strangers-yes complete strangers!- who did come along. Thanks to co-ops who sent us notes and display material at short notice.

We plan to put on a follow up talk at the new university within the month, to nab unwitting students.

Our web presence: randomcamelcoop.blogspot.co.uk has been updated, we've put adverts for members and loanstock on the RR website and Diggers & Dreamers – where else is good?

The Ipswich food co-op is moving so we're rewriting leases/ helper instructions, shifting thousands of pounds of wholefood in bizarre vehicles, building cupboards & shelves, damp-proofing basement walls, sewing bunting, ordering signatory forms. Our membership have finally agreed on a system of individual work commitment to the co-op! Yes!

Organising a critical mass for the day of climate action coinciding with the community garden's open day.

Helen's working looaads at libraries, belly-dancing, and has made a fab poster for a new women's comic book group. John's drumming in his punk band, and dealt the mercy blow to our plum tree, which had fallen in two during the summer. Not before giving us many plums to eat. We're starting a programme of works on the allotment, at least we've written down what we must do.

Gemma's on a Clothing Alterations night course and going delirious and bug-eyed at the wild stitches a modern electric sewing machine can do. She cooked at EF! Set-up. She also drove halfway each way to the Halfway House-warming party in Derbyshire in the van, only stalling twice. And she attended the first night of the tour of End of the Line in Aldeburgh cinema, how quaint. The film about the fishing industry and global fish stocks crashing by 2048.

Made rosehips into syrup, haws into leather and haw brandy, sloes into sloe gin, elderberries into pie and wine, acorns into 'coffee' (and hopefully soon tempeh) apples into turnover, chestnuts into sweet spread.

Kate, who came to her first gathering this summer, moved into and out of Burrell Rd in just 3 weeks. This experience was painful for all of us. It was due to a lack of communication, exaggerated by low levels of mental wellbeing, and we've learnt how difficult it is to be a nuclear-family sized group of people in a communal space with differing -unvocalised- expectations of what communal means. Sometimes what one thinks might be sticking to process can seem like ganging up on the member you have issues with. Anyone with experience of intense bust-ups with a backdrop of mental 'dysfunction' for want of a better/more accurate term, please talk to us.

So the co-op is reevaluating; very definitely want to live as part of a larger group and potentially more rurally than before. Stopped looking for houses on market, concentrating on promotion for recruiting purposes.

Last week we got another thousand quid in loanstock, from our food coops apple juicer. We need fifteen more thousands.

We're not bothering submitting another model loan application but the business plan is re-jigged, not due to a visit from FG though.



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