By JERRY FITZPATRICK
‘The running lady’: Joan Pick was a life-long campaigner for more sustainable lifestyles. Her life is to be remembered at a ceremony next week
Next Wednesday, March 6, East Croydon will be celebrating the remarkable life and work of local resident Joan Pick, the woman with the lightest of carbon toeprints.
Joan Pick was best-known as “the running lady”, whose figure pounding Croydon’s carriageways and pavements was familiar to almost everybody who went even occasionally into the great outdoors. She ran 12 miles every afternoon. If Joan had a mobile phone with pedometer app (she would have cursed even the idea), she would have clocked up daily 35,000 steps.
Pick was a 28-year-old management consultant working in the energy industry when she moved to Park Hill in 1968. Her epiphany occurred four years later. The notions that the use of fossil fuels and our diets including meat and fish will cause our planet to perish struck her as if by thunder.
She decided to devote her life to averting climate catastrophe.
At once, she mothballed her car. She adopted a raw wholefood diet. In 1975, she disposed of her television and then had her gas supply cut off, never to be reconnected.
Pick ceased all recreational travel. Travel for her meant going to the letterbox to post her environmental and economic ideas to politicians and academics, or attending libraries to read earnest periodicals and scientific books.
Familiar sight: Joan Pick on one of her daily 12-mile runs through Croydon
Social media was in its infancy in 2008, “going viral” was a phrase that had barely been coined. But Pick’s story did go viral in 2008, first through coverage in Croydon, and then – remarkably – long articles appeared about her in several national newspapers. Even more remarkably, worldwide coverage ensued.
I well remember Joan brandishing with much pride copies of French and American newspapers who printed feature articles about her and her objectives.
Pick did occasionally indulge a carbon habit. It was definitely non-addictive. In the last 45 years of her life, Pick enjoyed the benefit of a petrol engine, but only twice. The first time she travelled in a hearse to her mother’s funeral. The second time was when she needed to be picked up by an ambulance.
She was also known to the National Grid, but only as its most frugal consumer of electricity. Her flat was lit was by a single 40-watt light-bulb. She listened to Classic FM, environmental documentaries and The Archers on her old radio. She did not cook. In her capacity as secretary to the management board of her block of flats, she typed up agendas and minutes on her elderly manual typewriter.
Joan Pick was a very English kind of radical. Not into party politics, blue, red or green. Not into collective action of any sort. Not a joiner at all, except for her membership of Mensa, qualification for which is scoring at a level of the top 2% of the population in an intelligence test.
Pick acted as an individual, seeking to persuade decision-makers by drawing on the power of reason and the citation of cogent evidence in support of the view she put forward.
Sadly, decision-makers tend to be more swayed by other considerations, which may be why, more than half a century after Pick’s epiphany, Planet Earth has been brought even closer to oblivion. This is not to disparage Pick, who was a very down-to-earth woman. She had no illusion about changing the world. But she was going to give her all to try.
Well-remembered: Joan Pick
Joan Pick died in 2017. In that year, the East Croydon Community Organisation arranged for a lime tree to be planted in her memory in The Boulevard, at the western end of Addiscombe Road leading towards East Croydon Station. The tree is adjacent to Bisenden Road.
ECCO has organised two events next week to celebrate Joan Pick’s environmental legacy. Both involve the children of Tunstall Nursery School and the residents of Peony Court, a care home almost opposite Joan’s memorial tree.
The morning event starts at 10.30 at the Bisenden planted area. Anyone who knew Joan Pick or is interested in her life and work is invited to attend. Flowers and shrubs will be planted by the children and care home residents.
At 11.15, Councillor Humayun Kabir, a former civic mayor, will install a wood-turned plaque into the bed bearing the inscription:
Planted in celebration of Joan Pick (1940-2017) East Croydon resident, tireless campaigner for a sustainable Earth, affectionately known as ‘the running lady’.
The afternoon event is by invitation only. Peony Court has generously agreed to host and provide refreshments. Between 2.30 and 3.30 Tunstall children and Peony Court residents will be creating a mural to celebrate Joan Pick’s legacy.
Please email me at jerryfitzmsp@gmail.com by March 4 if you would like to attend the afternoon event, or simply to set out a memory of Joan which you would like to share.
- ECCO acknowledges with gratitude the provision of a grant of £750 to fund the events from the National Lottery Heritage Fund micro-grants programme as part of Croydon’s London Borough of Culture project
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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What a super article about a phenomenal woman who I remember well from the time that I lived in Turnpike Link. Joan Pick was a true British eccentric and totally unique.
We need more like her today!
Dear Joan… such a dear woman of very high intelligence – I miss our chats x
I used to be a regular runner and often saw Joan as she pounded the streets and green spaces of Croydon. I belonged to Croydon Running Sisters part of a national network to encourage women to run together for companionship and safety. Upon meeting Joan running alone in Shirley Hills I engaged her in conversation and asked if she would be interested in joining our group. She politely and firmly told me that she liked to run by herself as it was her thinking time!
She was always reassuring sight to see on the pavements of Croydon popping up in different locations as you drive past her in the dreaded car and trying to work out if she was in training for the London Marathon. Only well into the 2010’s did her background story come into prominence and you then realised that this was a solitary protest against the madness of the world. Another real character of Croydon sadly lost to history.