Roger, an old man helping handicapped children at a disabled home, suffers from fits of anger. He lashes out physically against a boy with cerebral palsy on their way home. As he gardens, now more aware than ever of his growing infirmity and his wife's arthritis, he reflects on the incident with equal parts guilt, weak justification, and worry for their own future.

'Direct action. You don't want to hear it. You want to make another pot of tea, and wait for the re-run of Star trek: The next generation to come on. Direct action means arguing with punters on the street who try to pull your placards off you, and dancing round the missile base so that the cops can laugh themselves sick before they move in on you. It's something you admire hearing about second-hand, shaking your head at someone else's bruises. It's not something you feel like doing, on a cold winter's night after dinner. Except that you can't stop thinking that right now, after dinner or not, and all through tonight, and tomorrow, twenty-four hours a day, in fact, seven days a week, Barron Papermills, just up the road, are glugging industrial effluent straight into the river.' (introduction)