Croquet-dokey (and how green groups are or aren't embedded in the community)

This weekend I went up to my girlfriend's home town as her parents were helping to organise an open day at the town croquet club, in aid of the local hospice charity.

Avoiding the perilously complicated association croquet, I sampled straighforward golf croquet, at which I got progressively less bad over the course of the day. I was able to draw on ancient memories of whacking those wooden balls around my gran's back garden. And whadayaknow - some of those old skills came back and it was great fun.

The open day also featured excellent cakes, a bring and buy sale at which I purchased a copy of the Silmarillion for all of 50p (in the wake of my successful re-read of The Hobbit) and of course the inevitable tombola.

I also discovered you could sing about croquet to the tune of JJ Cale's Cocaine...

I enjoyed myself a great deal - but the part of me that always looks at community events with an eye for learning was asking: why aren't we here at things like this?

Or in other words: why aren't environmental charities so embedded in their communities that co-hosting a fundraising event with a local sporting club would be as easy as it would be for other causes?

I don't begrudge them their access at all - yet the fact that we don't get in there nearly as much as the social, health and animal charities says something perhaps a little sad about our status among everyday people.

So, the Magpiemoth challenge to you, o reader, is this: are you a member of a sports or social club who would like to do something with or for Friends of the Earth? If so, you know where I am...

And if you're active in a green group and already gotten all up in the community's face - in the nicest possible way - at an event like this already I'd really like to hear about it.