{"id":14705,"date":"2014-05-21T09:13:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-21T08:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14705"},"modified":"2014-05-21T09:13:21","modified_gmt":"2014-05-21T08:13:21","slug":"how-to-survive-a-walk-down-chugger-alley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=14705","title":{"rendered":"How to survive a walk down ‘chugger alley’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term ‘chugger’ has been coined for a charity mugger, someone who tries to stop you in the street and sign you up to a particular charity. You’ll find a fuller – and less kind – description – here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now I’m fine about contributing to charities. I support many on an ongoing basis. But I like to choose the charities I fund in the privacy of my own home. I really dislike a stranger in a street trying to sign me up for a charity and this happens a lot in central London.<\/p>\n

In fact, usually, these chuggers work in groups, often in a busy street, so that walking that route becomes something of an obstacle course.<\/p>\n

One of the worst streets in London for his phenomenon is Villiers Street<\/a> – what I call ‘chugger alley’ – which is narrow and has tube station entrances at either end, so that it is often the haunt of a chugger team.<\/p>\n

I have two techniques – seemingly contradictory – for avoiding them.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. On entering the scene where I believe chuggers might be operating, I look way ahead to spot them. Usually they wear coloured shirts and carry clip boards, so they’re not hard to identify.<\/li>\n
  2. As I approach each chugger, I skirt around them as far as possible and, since they sometimes attempt to call out and engage in conversation anyway, I stare at the ground and pretend that I have heard nothing.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Have you ever experienced chugging?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The term ‘chugger’ has been coined for a charity mugger, someone who tries to stop you in the street and sign you up to a particular charity. You’ll find a fuller – and less kind – description – here. Now I’m fine about contributing to charities. I support many on an ongoing basis. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-life-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14721,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14705\/revisions\/14721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}