The dirty business of complaining - who left the lights on?

The Quality Street tin of seeds has been at the end of the kitchen table for a few days and last night I went through checking what was in date, what might never germinate. 

I saved tomato seed in autumn on kitchen paper but I've run out of lettuce, carrot, turnips and want to try swede again. Should I bother with sweetcorn and broad beans, the badgers' favourites? 

Growing has become my one defence against despair. I don't know if I still believe in speaking out against what I think is wrong. I don't know if an individual has any power left. 

The racecourse up the hill has four searchlights fixed to the roof of its grandstand and pointing towards Whitehawk estate that are on all night. They're visible from the bottom of Wilson Avenue. What are they on for? To show us the invisible horses racing around the bend from the golf course, past the nature reserve the council wants to build on? 

I wonder about the foxes who live and hunt there, birds that can't sleep, sheep grazing just over the fence who also need to sleep, all the other mammals and insects whose territory this is for much more of the year than the few days horses pound the turf and people bet money on the fastest. For these creatures, living by the racecourse, there is no night. And for anyone looking up from the bottom of the hill, there are searchlights as if we were all culpable and suspect. Why?

I wondered about writing to the racecourse to ask when yesterday I read yet another piece about the sixth extinction and how light pollution affects insects. 

There's a lot of talk about citizen scientists. But citizen witnesses who hold business, the powerful, the elected, to account? Where do we speak out now that it has been proven social media favours extreme conflict to create traffic, to generate information, to make money?

After a lifetime of believing it was my duty to speak out, I wonder if it's time to shut up or murmur instead to the seedlings. I have asked the racecourse owners for an environmental policy, for what it's worth. 

But my success rate is low. In my recent history of writing to local councillors and businesses about noise pollution, air pollution, traffic diverted past primary schools, cycling, the most immediate impact I had was after I contacted investors in the cemetery business. After emailing these finance men in the last lockdown I had a phone call from as cemetery business exec. However, it's disheartening to spend so much time in the role of old mad woman complainer. And this, I suspect, is the secret weapon of those who continue to pollute with impunity. We are conditioned to crave big white smiles and positivity, not the dirty business of asking questions.