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Story continues from yesterday:

On Sunday at midday the Society met outside the bus station.

“If you get spotted, just walk away,” said Tania, “they can’t stop you.”

“Can’t they?”

“No, that would be assault.  All they can do is tell you to leave and ban you from coming back.”

Luke and Joe weren’t worried.

“But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to get caught,” Isabel reminded them, “if anyone sees you they’ll just peel the stickers right off and we want them to stay on as long as possible.  We’ve got to be discreet.”

“You’re very bossy for someone who’s new to bein’ sneaky,” said Luke.  “Don’t worry about us, this is right up our wheelhouse.”

Tania and Isabel looked at each other uneasily.

“Mmm,” said Tania, tapping her fingers against her bottom lip, “but sometimes you’re loud.”

Luke grinned.  “On’y when I need to be.”

Armed with eight strips of stickers each, the Society marched into town.  First to get stuck was a BHF ad on a bus shelter.  Luke put a sticker under the slogan “Fight For Every Heart Beat”.  Next was a CRUK ad in front of the supermarket.  Joe put a sticker under the slogan “This Is Race For Life”.  Then there were three more bus stops.  They displayed ads for Diabetes UK, BHF and Kidney Research UK.  The Society made all of them more transparent.

“This street is looking decidedly more honest,” said Tania smiling.

When they got to the shops they decided to work in pairs.  Joe and Isabel went into the British Heart Foundation, while Tania and Luke went two doors up to Cancer Research UK.

BHF wasn’t very busy and there was only one member of staff behind the counter.  Joe tried to look like a normal shopper, picking things up, looking at them, deciding against them and putting them back down.  Every time a customer approached the cashier, he took the opportunity to place a sticker somewhere – on a shelf in front of the books, on a price tag, on a rack of birthday cards.  He made sure he wasn’t in view of any other customers first, but there weren’t many so that wasn’t difficult.  Isabel, meanwhile, grabbed a couple of dresses off the rail and went straight to a changing cubicle.  Safe behind the curtain, she affixed one sticker to the bottom right hand corner of the mirror and another to the poster on the wall.  Then she decided against the dresses, returned them to the rail, chose an alternative and retreated to the second cubicle to do it all again.  Emerging to find a woman waiting to try something on, she decided it was time to leave.  Joe was already outside having successfully labelled the leaflet stand and the open door.  He wanted to sticker the shop window too but Isabel shook her head.  It wasn’t safe.  Too many people around.

They got to the CRUK shop, which had several stickers on the window, just as Luke and Tania were coming out.  The looks on their faces indicated their mission had been equally successful.  The four of them walked away together in a slow, relaxed, unsuspicious manner.

“It’s cool being an activist,” said Tania.

“Yeah,” said Isabel, “I wanna do it again.”

“I don’t think there are any more bad charity shops here.  Unless – what about Marie Curie?”

Isabel looked at the list.  “No, Marie Curie’s on the green list – it does say they belong to the Association of Medical Research Charities which makes them say they support animal research on their website but they don’t actually do any.”

“I’ve seen charity ads on trains,” said Luke, “let’s go to the station!”

So the Society walked briskly to the railway station, passing as they did a big red British Heart Foundation collection bin begging for a couple of unarguable truths.

“I need some more,” said Luke.

“Why, how many have you got left?” asked Tania.

“One.  How many have you got?”

“Forty two.”

Luke grinned.  “Can I have some of yours then?”

Joe laughed.  “How have you got through fifty five stickers?”

“I put ’em on the price tags.”

“On the clothes?”

“Yeah.”

“All of them?”

“As many as I could.  I couldn’t do the last one coz the man was starin’ at me.”

The others looked at him without saying a word.

“What?  I wasn’t loud,” he said defensively.

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Story continues tomorrow but if you don’t want to wait you can read it here now 😀

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