Let’s do this together

My radical friend Alison came down from Edinburgh at the weekend to join the Extinction Rebellion march in London. In between glueing herself to bar seats in drinking venues around the capital (handy when they want to chuck you out at last orders) she took a night off starting a revolution to visit me.

“I’d like to join the Red Rebel Brigade,” she declared, showing me a picture of the unnerving red statue ladies on her phone when I met her off the train at my local station.

“Impossible! You couldn’t stay quiet for that long,” I said to my eco-minded friend. I love her dearly, but she can be a bit challenging if she finds out you’ve not been recycling hard enough.

My first thought when she visits is to hide the kitchen roll (she’d say ‘cutting trees down to wipe up your dribble is unnecessary”) or not buying unrecycled bog roll (“it should chafe when you use it – like a hair shirt”).

I happen to agree with her about the climate crisis and that we’re all going to hell in a single-use plastic handcart of our own making – but obviously not enough to get off my lazy bum and join all my worthy friends demonstrating over four days at The Big One.

Instead she came down and we went to join our other old party pal, Marie-Lou for her birthday drinks.

Glamorous M-Lou is the exact opposite of Alison, and after a few cocktails, she likes to wind Alison up about her own non-existent eco-credentials.

“I intend to be so full of plastic surgery when I’m older, my body won’t decompose for 1,000 years,” she taunts. “Well it won’t matter because there won’t be a world left anyway,” argues Alison.

It’s the same every time we meet, which means that there’s hope for M-Lou – because at least she recycles her jokes.

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

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