Ordeal On The Buses

London was a seething mass of tourism. The streets and attractions were filled with foreign visitors all streaming in an unstoppable if rather slow wave of loud, gawping pedestrians. Having put up with this for a while, I thought it was time to go home.

The tube seemed too hot. On the other hand, buses are cramped miserable slices of Hades at its worst. Naturally, I thought it was a good idea to get on board one.

Bus travel is slow, painful (if you have to stand all the way, like I did) and full of sullen miserable sods who hate you. A friend said being on a bus was better than the (much faster) tube because 'it was like an adventure'. Whether she meant A Clockwork Orange or Heart of Darkness I'm not sure. Add this to the dark and rather cramped space in a bendy bus (AKA, the 'accordion of death') and it's FUN FUN FUN all the way.

The highlight of the trip was a savage row between two women who were jammed up close to me. One fumed that the other's son was behaving badly while the other swore blind that firstly her foe was talking crap and secondly it was a moot point, as her child couldn't even talk in the first place. (Whether that meant he was still a toddler or a very backward 12-year-old, I couldn't really tell, owing to the claustrophobic press of flesh I found myself in.)

It reminded me that kids on public transport are a menace. Or at least their parents are. Earlier that day, some oaf rammed his child's buggy into my foot. Later on, some twit let her toddler slowly wobble down the stairs at Russell Square on his own, nearly making the rest of us all miss a train.

Getting back to the row, though, what stood out was that they were both clearly speaking English as a second language but were putting in a lot of effort effort to abuse the other one with as much care as can be. You could even hear them putting effort into pronouncing the syllables as well as they could while at the same time getting very, very pissed off.

Perhaps this is the answer to the age-old dilemma of integration versus diversity? Just stick 'em on a cramped, odious bus for an hour and let the hate and bile come flooding out via the world's Lingua Anglais. 'Cos nothing sums up London, and indeed the UK, better than irritable, bitter commuters who really just want the rest of their species to FUCK RIGHT OFF.

As I got off, a Pakistani man said sorry for letting a support strap hit my head as I got off. He sounded very sincere and upset about it. I hoped he heard me say back that it was OK while I leapt off the bus with some relief. It seemed a rather strange moment, like it should not have happened, and that we should have simply grunted at each other as one shoved his way past the other instead.

G20 2009 - I (Don't) Predict A Riot.

The day started well enough. The TV stations were abuzz with potential violence at the G20 protests, with an emphasis on girly slap fights between protestors and police. Some idiots drove in via a fake armoured car. The BBC was there to report on it - and anything else to make the protests look like epic battles or demonstrations of stupidity rather than, well, protests.

Two Jehovah's Witnesses then knocked on the door. They were a pair of old women - one who did all the talking, and an older woman in a wheelchair. Having had dealings with the Watchtower people before, I assume they always travel in pairs to protect themselves, but how these two could deal with some of the arseholes round where I live is anyone's guess.

The spokeswoman was friendly. "We're having a ceremony to remember Jesus' Death", she said, handing me a flier. "It would be nice to see you there!" What can you say? You don't believe but you don't really want to hurt their feelings. So I took the flier and said thank you. Why not? She then asked permission to pick up one of their 'tracts', which had blown out of her hand and onto the lawn. I said "yes - please don't worry!" and gave my goodbyes, closing the door. At least they're polite, I thought.

It seems like a doomed cause. Trying to spread faith in the blasted no-man's land between East London and Essex (aka Dagenham, Romford and Barking) is a fool's errand. Perhaps the point was in the trying rather than the success rate. But I wondered whether the death of Jesus was the point - surely it was his life and resurrection that really counted. Then again, that was my vague, slack-arsed Church of England perspective speaking there. What would Thor and Queztacoatl make of it?

I decided to go out to the British Library. Riots or no riots, I would push forward, without fear... As to be expected, it turned out to be an anti-climax. There were no riots outside of the main areas under such scrutiny. I spotted at most two people in keffiyehs (the patterned scarves first worn by noted peace-loving vegetarian feminists Hezbollah and the PLO). But it's pretty common these days and they may well have been just commuters like the rest of us.

The police were nonetheless out in force. There were two on the train in - big bastards in hi-vis vests, helmets and stab-proofs. They talked about the day's events like gossiping old women.

At Liverpool Street itself there were scores of Met Police, British Transport Police, City of London Police and Community Support Officers, all working in pairs or the occasional trio. It was a decisive show of fluorescent yellow, checkerboard patterning and glittering steel on black. They all looked bored.

Still, as I waited for the tube to take me to King's Cross, a tannoy boomed ominously that the Waterloo & City Line was closed after a request from no less than... "THE POLICE." (This line links up Bank station, where the protests were mostly happening, to the potential escape route of Waterloo Station.) Later, I heard from another tannoy that Bank itself was closed.

En route, I found myself sitting over the way from a man with one eye. He looked Somalian or North African, and his right eye had been replaced by scar tissue and skin, while his remaining eye was closed. He was asleep. As I got off the train, I saw him alight too, with a guide stick. I avoided him and pretended not to look.



The British Library itself is not an impressive building. It looks like Wood Green Shopping Centre minus the personality and aesthetic charm. It won't be loved or accepted and they will knock it down in 30 years at most.



I saw the statue of Urizen, stooped and unaware of the city around him. There was no room for Barrack Obama, AIG, Lehman's or even Anarchism in his purview. There was only the pursuit of knowledge.



I renewed my membership, had a piss and then travelled back to Liverpool Street. It remained peaceful. Shockingly so. I was within walking distance of the demonstrations and I could hear nothing. Everyone around me acted as though it was business as usual. A screamer on an Evening Standard booth outside King's Cross squealed 'RIOT POLICE FIGHT ANARCHY IN CITY'!!! Yet it was hard not to think of disappointed spikies, riot cops and aggro-loving city workers all surveying the relatively urbane scene and thinking 'is this it?'



When I got back to Liverpool Street, only one or two obvious protesters in lurid clothes could be spotted. When I bought a Standard, though, three young men - all punks - were crowded around the booth reading the headlines. One of the punks, who had black spiky hair and a leather jacket upon which an 'Exploited' band patch was sewn on the back, bought a copy and then stormed off with his friends in tow. "They said it started peacefully and then turned violent! Bollocks!!!" he said, aflame with indignance at the mendacious press.

A friend of mine then took me to one of the demonstrations, which was in the southern half of Bishopsgate at this point. The crowd was loud and rowdy, but harmless, and the police were relaxed. But my friend pointed out the riot vans she had spotted down the side roads nearby and how she had seen a few plain clothes cops talking into their walkie talkies, standing about like they owned the place. And above, constantly, there was the never-ending wail of police helicopters looking down from above.



My friend asked if we should mingle with the crowd. "Sod that!" I said. "What if the spikies and the rozzers kicked off?" "Hmph! Well, I think you'll find it's actually a minority that causes all the problems" she growled. "It's rogue elements, not the protesters!"

We walked off, dodging the trail of piss leaking out a doorway that was being used by some of the protesters as an ad hoc latrine. It was in a sense the official G20 urinal, but taking a photo of it just seemed too weird for some reason...

There was little in the way of actual violence, then, but lots of fear. The employees of the big firms in the area were taking no chances. No one we saw come out of the offices were wearing suits - they were all in street clothes instead. They were, ironically, as much in disguise as those protesters who wore hoods and masks. You had to wonder whether the more colorfully dressed protestors were only wearing their clothes for that day too, and would wash out the hair dye and undo their dreadlocks when they got home.



Still, the anxiety was all around. We went to a Starbucks that overlooks the courtyard at one end of Liverpool Street. There were no customers and all the tables, chairs and bins had been removed. We sat nearby, but the area seemed half deserted while people all walked past quickly, not wanting to tempt fate. A woman some distance away started having a panic attack - we left when the first aiders from a nearby office ran up to help her. Was it the protests she was afraid of, or some terrible crisis in her life? We left quickly - nothing is more frightening than seeing fear itself.

We went to Tesco's. They had banned alcohol sales, but the few protestors in there were well-behaved and relaxed. The LCD screens were all broadcasting BBC and Sky footage of the protests, making skirmishes and squabbles, minor injuries and a few arrests all look like a Violence-Jack-With-PMT bloodbath. Despite the anti-consumerist doggerel down the road, we all shopped as if nothing had happened. And in a sense it hadn't. Nothing had really changed.



As we walked out, another punk was in front of us. His hooded top had the Crass logo on the back, with the legend - "Jesus Died For His Sins, Not Mine". What would the Jehovah’s Witnesses make of that, I wondered? What they and the protesters had in common, though, was this: a desire to change minds, remake the world, and bring about their own vision for the future.

We went to a pub for a drink. Again: no protesters, but plenty of city workers, all lairy, shouting and arm wrestling alpha males to a man. It was just another evening for them. We then went home. My friend wondered if we shouldn't go to the next protest in May. Why not? It might not change anything, but it wouldn't do any harm either - despite the media's efforts to make it seem otherwise.

Welcome To Maryland!!!

Random Bookshop Shot.

Just off Charing Cross Road... Note the copy of Bob Dylan's cult novel 'Tarantula' replete with a big hairy monster on the front. (Not at all like Bob himself, of course.)

The Olympic Stadium, Stratford, March 2009

It's going nicely...

A Day On The Rails...

There was an argument at the station. A man had been stopped by the ticket inspectors at the top of the stairs. They were arguing like it was a matter of life or death. Eventually the man stormed off without paying, swearing at one inspector who told him to go make an official complaint, then swore back at him in turn. Neither man won.

I got on the train. It went past a huge cemetary where a funeral was taking place. Apart from the hearse and the old fashioned black and chrome Bentley for the family, there were cars - and lots of them. They were parked behind each other in a long, continuous line leading up to the avenue where the funeral was no doubt taking place. That was the roundabout tribute to this person - never mind the garish floral tributes, it was the twenty or so cars, all carrying those who wanted to say goodbye.

Later, on the tube train, I saw a dishevelled looking woman reading a newspaper. She looked rather lank and grubby, her long greasy hair hanging over her face as she looked down on the paper. She had a battered black leather jacket under which poked out the bottom of a women's white top with green stripes - the kind you might get out of Bon Marche. Her legs were pipe thin and clad in narrow jeans. This was all topped off with a pair of dirty white cowboy boots that ended with long pointed toes. It was quite a sight.

Then she looked up and turned out to be a man with a thick bikers' moustache. I quickly looked away.

When I got back, the ticket inspectors had doubled in number and there were two policemen too. They were taking no chances. Fare dodgers seem to think a free ride is worth pulling a knife out for these days. Or maybe it was just a performance put on for the commuters - or a mixture of both.

A Day Out In Clapham.

On the train into London, two kids sat behind me. A girl and a boy, aged 15 or 16, Asian, eating snacks. Like most young people, they talked, talked, talked and talked without actually saying anything. Silence or anything too remotely serious is torture for the young and they know it. All those sullen, silent, erious adult faces on the train: it's better to go yak-yak-yak-yak-yak than that, and gorge on junk to drown out the howl of the speeding train.

Their accents were mostly Bengali but, this being East London, there was cockney, Essex and Jafaican here and there too, a wild car crash of accents. It was Babel with crisps and chocolate.

Later I found myself by the Long Pond on Clapham Common. The Sun was shining brightly on the water so I shielded my eyes as I took pictures. The ducks bobbled about aimlessly or chased each other off in mini tidal waves of fury.

Then I saw the fox. At first I thought it was asleep. But then I noticed its rictus grin, the dried, blackened bloodstains. and the leg that had almost entirely been ripped off. A big dog must have got it a night or so before, yet it looked so peaceful.

I felt I had to take a picture of it. Odd though this sounds, I felt like I was at a crime scene of a place where a great tragedy had taken place. If I didn't take a picture, who'd believe the fox had lived or died? As I did this, a short schoolgirl - maybe 14 - in grownups' makeup walked past and looked at me with a mix of alarm and disgust. There was no room in her life for death and the unusual. Her sweater was deep red - the colour of blood.

I then met up with a friend at a McDonald's in Liverpool Street. Some young men behind us got into a fight over next to nothing. An off duty policemen intervened though and herded them outside to calm down. As we walked past, he was still doing this, all the while drinking his milkshake.

Anarchy In The Pub

We were in a pub near London Bridge, at the going away do for a friend. We were upstairs in the function room. It was worn and subject to benign neglect, while the barmaid was fierce and unfriendly.

On the wall at the other end of the bar was a massive round oil portrait of a dead Monarch, starting soullessly with covetous beady eyes. Next to it someone had stuck up a four page Anarchist newspaper with a piece of bluetack.

If you pulled the rag open, you could open it up and read the pages inside. It preached self-relaince for the working classes, 'us and them', a simple morality play where the poor were virtuous and good and the rich were all villains.

But no one really listens - it's just a dangerous dance for some to flirt with and a cyclopic obsession for others to while away their lives with.

Yet that protrait of the monarch will still be there, staring with empty hungry eyes, long after the anarchist newspaper has faded and decayed and been thrown into a landfill. There is a lesson there, but what it is is debateable.

A friend of ours climbed on top of the pool table to toast our soon-to-departed contemporary. The barmaid roared at him to get down, but he didn't listen. She told everyone who was cheering him that they could all fuck off too. But he only got down when he was finished - she said, 'you can't have any more drinks!' And he said - 'good! They're overpriced anyway!' With that moment he said more than a whole army of anarchists ever could.