Blog the Second...

My account of the Climate Change Champion's announcement (On the 20th February...quite a while ago, sorry) 

I arrived in London on 20th February not knowing what to expect. The tube journey seemed to take forever (after I had started counting stations when we missed our first stop, not my fault I hasten to add). We got there, arriving at the hotel I remember thinking, I’ll be able to relax a bit now (that’s what jinxed it). "We’re going to the sky lounge for some tea" Adam (the boss, essentially) told us. He managed to say two bad words, according to me, in one sentence (tea – yuck! - and sky – I had seen this hotel and was under no misconceptions) so I asked a stupid question. "Where’s that?" "Thirtieth floor", the top.2 ....Oh..... (imagine a look of shock/imminent death, that was me) Relax? I’d be lucky.

The lift was jerky. Then there were steps. The second set of stairs was optional, guess which I chose. We had lunch, a quite enjoyable one considering how high up we were; I suppose the altitude makes you hungrier. Kate came in (media, lots of phone calls!) and gave us sheets. "Interviews" Ah... no pressure then...I had the first one. Back into the jerky lift :-) . Considering the phones didn’t work for ages and I was recovering from altitude sickness the interviews went quite well. Although after listening to my radio interview, I realize the random laughter was quite weird.

I also had to go for a television interview, so I put on my smart jacket and we walked to a green next to the houses of parliament. The interview took about 5 minutes and I believed it was the best so far, apart from the parts where I trail off a bit towards the end (and knowing my luck, no prizes for guessing which part actually got aired for 5 seconds). We spent a while in a juice bar, waiting for the others so we could walk to Downing Street. I was there with Pippa (East Midlands) and Adam (not the boss, East of England), they had had TV interviews also. When the others arrived we all (quite a big group) walked to Number 10. We had pictures outside with Joan Ruddock (‘Parliamentary Under Secretary – Climate Change, Biodiversity and Waste’ – and there was me thinking ‘Climate Change Champion for the South West’ was a bit of a mouthful!). See picture:

We walked inside, up the spiral stairs with the pictures of previous Prime Ministers lining the walls. Tony Blair was there, grinning at us from the top. I was looking round frantically, I have to remember all this so I can tell everyone, my immediate thought after that was...it’s very yellow. We were offered tea and kitkats (my dad managed to embarrass me by saying rather loudly "the tea isn’t too bad in this place" – the ‘head’ of the UK, hmmm). We walked through into a room with pillars (possibly called the pillared room, can’t think why...) and sat at a table. Gordon Brown was supposed to answer our questions but he was late due to a speech so Joan Ruddock answered them.

I asked ‘Why say yes to nuclear power when renewable energy is much less expensive, much less dangerous and there is much more of it?’ and she told me some excuses like “Renewable is more expensive if it’s large scale, like the severn barrage” and "We need to create a mix of the two" (Yes, so we are doing something about the Climate Change problem but adding to the future’s problem of nuclear poisoning – don’t get me started on nuclear). After her deflection of questions, we waited for Gordon Brown to come. After a wait he emerged, "Hello" (loud voice, arms open, big smile) and started to talk to us, which he wasn’t supposed to do (tut-tut). We had our pictures taken with him (lucky me... that turned out well) while we were talking about our entries with him (I have decided that I can’t smile AND talk AND think). We sat down again and he spoke to us about an island he had visited off the coast of Australia that was at a big risk from sea level rise.

Jess (North West) read her speech to him and wished him happy birthday on all of our behalves. He asked us about what was the most important aspect to reduce and what our events would be (hang on; I thought we were supposed to ask the questions). Thanking us for coming he departed for another appointment that I forget. We had a quick tour of the house, there was a door that went nowhere just so the room was equal (when we were doing symmetry in houses in my history lesson I was tempted to go "well, when I went to number 10..." but I thought it might be a bit showy!) We retrieved our cameras, had a few more pictures and interviews outside the door and then we had free time in London for two hours!

My father and I decided to go to the Houses of Lords and Commons. After another security check (we had one before entering number 10) we were allowed through, in the House of Commons about ten people were debating five words on the European constitution, I nearly fell asleep and we went out when I started to have a coughing fit (I blame the dust). The House of Lords was more ornate and people were arguing about Northern Rock, but I succumbed to coughing again. We walked back to the hotel, it was cold and I only had my smart jacket on, it is not very good at keeping me warm.

We had a posh dinner at the hotel on a rather lower floor, second (We were sleeping on fifth so I got used to jerky lift after a while). We had a talk from Karen Ford who runs footprintfriends.com the site on which the Climate Change Champions are being hosted, aimed at getting young people talking about Climate Change. We received footprint friends poster packs and Adam gave us cagoules for our boat trip (Now that’s a good story). After sneaking a second chocolate yummy raspberry thing we went back up the jerky lift to our room, watched torchwood (didn’t make any sense cause I don’t watch it – I have no TV*) and went to sleep.

*FAQ . What’s not having a television like? Very Peaceful (although my dad has one, he tapes the essentials like Dr Who, My family and Have I Got News For You.)

P.S. This wasn’t exaggerated THAT much. The altitude was OK, but I guess it’s easy to say that afterwards. (Here’s a random fact - I love mountains, just hate tall buildings, I just mistrust the manmade structures...I don’t know how I’d feel about Silbury Hill.)

 Shirley 2008