So, a few weeks ago, I got a couple of text messages from friends, fiancés and colleagues who had gone through Canning Circus on a bus and noticed a bedsheet with writing on it hung over a baclony.
So I went to take a picture myself.
It’s a little tricky to read, so here’s a closeup:
.
I think the banner was there in response to a house over the way that had gone a little bit mad with Tory correx boards that dotted all over their house and wall.
Anyway, I thought it would be nice to leave a proper Lib Dem correx board in our usual dayglo orange, so I tried to get in. They’re in a really nice converted cigar factory, and the blank plate of doorbells didn’t give you much of a clue which flat was where in the building.
So, I’m afraid, I rang bells at random. I hate doing that. I don’t like trying to get into flats even to deliver leaflets – because frankly, if you ring people’s bells at random and say, “Hi, I’m here to deliver leaflets” – and someone lets you in – why bother having buzzers and locks at all?
So I spoke to about 6 people before finally getting the flat who said they were the ones with the terrace and the banner, and they buzzed me in. When I walked closer to their inside front door, if you see what I mean, I was met in the corridor by a man who explained that it was not his terrace, but his neighbours, and he pointed out the right door, and then closed his own door.
I knocked the right door, but no response. Which left me standing in a locked corridor with a Lib Dem board but no pen and paper. I couldn’t go back to the car to get something to write with because the door would close behind me, and I didn’t want to try my luck at getting through the buzzer maze twice.
So I just left the board balanced against the front door, hoping whoever’s door it was wouldn’t find it too freaky the board had just turned up.
When I got home, I could cross reference the full address with the electoral register, and write to the people who really lived there, so I popped a letter in the post thanking them for their banner, urging them to use the stakeboard to augment it, and asking them to let us have it back when the election is done. (I’m a skinflint. But those boards are £15 each, and can only be bought in packs of 10. Nottingham Lib Dems only own 2, which the central party kindly gave us as part of the Green Tax Switch campaign)
Imagine my delight, when, a few days later, I get tagged in the same letter on Facebook. I was half expecting it – by and large the people who live in flats like that are definitely part of the digital revolution. What I wasn’t quite expecting was that the people who lived in the flat were friends of a new member in a completely different part of town who we recruited a few weeks ago. Small world.
If you’re my friend on facebook, you might be able to see it at this link. Not very sure how privacy settings work.
Once I’d been tagged in the photo, I commented on it, letting my social networking mugshot show up on the facebook page.
But if that wasn’t cool enough, the next stage in the story is that I was out canvassing this week, and someone who’d read the letter on Facebook recognised me on the doorstep. Small world indeed!
Niles's Blog 