I went to my first council meeting the other night.
It probably has got something to do with the new business cards I had printed before the meeting: It’s all gone to my head.
The meeting contained a plethora of different juxtaposed personalities; the charismatic councillors, the angry locals, the troubled souls who seem to have missed the point and the over large men who feel that the sandwiches at the back have been made just for him. Maybe that is the only reason he is here. There are more statements than questions, people want to project themselves into the arena more than they want to affect change or influence those in power (or at least in closer proximity to ‘those in power’). My slot arrives quickly and my name, miss spelt and miss pronounced, jolts me out of my seat and I take my place at the microphone.
I am sure I speak too fast, I am sure I was red faced and many didn’t understand, and therefore care, what I said. But before I get back to my seat I have already got one name, one informant for information. By the time the meeting ends (half an hour late and 3 hours after I spoke) I have several more, a few leads to follow and I am positively bouncing with the experience of it. I walk off down the street through an area I would soon know all too well, a place that, until recently, I could not walk down through fear of personal attack.
I wonder through the streets to my bus home thinking about getting a bike to make these trips more fluid (and cheaper). I romantically place myself on the bike, laptop in the bag and my headphones playing back to me a recent interview. ‘Dave the researcher’...
My smile is quickly washed away as two young men throw themselves out of a nearby alley and my heart races and the imagined laptop in my bag vanishes... fieldwork.
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