Diana & Mass Lone Demo – 2006

Diana & Mass Lone Demo: On Thursday 31 August I went with a friend to the gates of Kensington Palace on the ninth anniversary of the killing of Princess Diana (I think I deliberately misspelt her name twice as Diane to show my lack of interest in the royals) before going to a pub in Kensington.

Later in the day I went to Parliament Square for the Mass Lone Demonstration suggested by Mark Thomas in response to the ludicrous and dangerous restrictions on protests in a large area around Parliament and other designated sites imposed in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.


Princess Diana, 9th Anniversary commemoration

Kensington Palace

Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006

The last day of the month was the ninth anniversary of Diana’s death, and her fans, including members of the Diana Circle, were at Kensington Palace to mark the event, taping flowers and tributes to the gates and fence. I’d gone to meet a friend, who had extensively photographed the scenes there in the days immediately following her death.

Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006
Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006

The fans had come from all over the country, and from Germany and elsewhere. Father Frank Gelli, who was curate of St Mary Abbots just down the road at the time of her death, led prayers at a short memorial service. Throughout the day more people arrived with tributes and flowers. Next year on the 10th anniversary there are hopes for a bigger event. [And I went again then.]

Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006
Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006

Kensington Palace has had a bit of a face lift, doubtless benefiting from the Diana effect on visitor numbers. However, rather than taking a visit there, we went to visit the Elephant And Castle, and old press pub, taking a short detour through St Mary Abbots on our way.

Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006
Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006

More pictures on My London Diary.


Mass Lone Demonstration

Parliament Square

Diana & Mass Lone Demo - 2006

Later in Parliament Square I got a small badge ‘Mass Lone Demonstration 31/8 Parliament Square‘. This was an idea from Mark Thomas, who had suggested that as many people as possible should give the required one weeks notice to the police that they planned a solo demonstration in parliament square from 6-7pm.

I’m not sure how many did so, though there were perhaps around 50 with different placards while I was there. If I’d heard about it in time, I would perhaps have applied and arrived with a poster “End Police Harassment Of Photographers“.

One of the stupidest things that the Labour government have done was to try to pass a law to get rid of Brian Haw, whose continuing protest opposite the Houses of Parliament was causing minor embarrassment to Labour ministers, particularly Mr Blair. They managed to tag it on to something called SOCPA, the Serious Organised Crime And Police Act 2005.

The blunt weapon they wielded banned all demonstrations without a weeks notice within a kilometre or so of parliament, and much to their disappointment it has so far failed to get rid of Brian. Actually he’s a reasonable man, and if they had instead done something serious to stop children being killed in Iraq he would have been out of the square immediately.

Instead they choose to strike at free speech for all of us. It’s a law that has so far resulted in some farcical prosecutions (though with serious consequences for those taken to court.) Many of the police I’ve talked to obviously feel the law is an ass, and resent having to try and enforce it. Often they’ve turned their backs and walked away from illegal events (or even escorted the people carrying them out when they were company directors), but it has also wasted huge amounts of public money when they have been pushed into action.

One of the provisions of the law is that a lone demonstration – one person with a placard – is automatically to be granted permission provided a week’s notice is given, although conditions may be attached either when the permission is granted or by a police officer on the spot. It was Mark Thomas who had the idea that there could be a large number of such demonstrations at the same time and place, and it was made public on several blogs and web sites.

Those taking part were encouraged to pick their own subject of protest – serious or silly – and you can see some of these in my pictures. Brian Haw, who has received limited permission to use a megaphone, was able to do so.

A few more pictures here on My London Diary.


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A Manchester Canal – 2026

A Manchester Canal: During our short stay in Manchester earlier this month we did quite a bit of walking around the city, mainly admiring its Victorian and early 20th Century architecture, but also its canals – and more.

A Manchester Canal - 2026

Of course Manchester isn’t Venice, and canals are one of the few things that Manchester has to concede that Birmingham rather outdoes it, but canals played a vital role in the development of the city – starting with James Brindley who built the Bridgewater Canal to bring the Duke’s coal 39 miles into the city to enable the industrial revolution which was just starting. Opened in 1761 it was the first true canal in Britain.

A Manchester Canal - 2026

These pictures are from a short walk into the city centre from Ancoats along a different canal, the Ashton canal and ending on the Rochdale Canal at Piccadilly Basin. Also built largely to bring coal from the city, it was built in the 1790s. Traffic had virtually ended by the Second World War and finally ended in 1958. The canal was left to rot and became unnavigable, but was eventually restored for leisure use.

A Manchester Canal - 2026

Once lined with industry, residential development around this section of the canal began around 1990 and on this section few of the original buildings remain. But the canal and its banks are still there, now adorned with a few relics of a past age.

A Manchester Canal - 2026
A Manchester Canal - 2026
A Manchester Canal - 2026
A Manchester Canal - 2026
A Manchester Canal - 2026

The canals now provide a convenient and direct traffic-free route into the city centre for cyclists and pedestrians. From where I took the final picture above it was just a short stroll to a pub on Piccadilly for a cheap and pleasant evening meal – and it was ‘happy hour’.


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Childrens Day, Notting Hill – 2004

Childrens Day, Notting Hill Carnival: Sunday 29th August 2004 was Children’s Day at Notting Hill Carnival and back in 2004 I wrote just two short paragraphs to go with a large number of pictures.


“I don’t know whose wallet it was in the hand I caught as it reached into my pocket in Cambridge Gardens, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t the time or place to argue much, so I let the youth wriggle away.”

“The 40th Notting Hill Carnival was living up to its reputation, in this and also in the friendliness of most of the participants. This was Children’s Day, so I took my son, and will embarrass him with a couple of pictures of him dancing. But mostly it was what we have come to expect, and a little dull weather and the odd shower didn’t mar the celebrations”


I didn’t take my wallet to Notting Hill, but in a densely-packed crowd found a hand putting an empty one back into my left front trouser pocket. Perhaps he thought he had earlier taken it from that same pocket before removing the contents and was trying to replace it, or did he just want an easy way to get rid of the evidence.

I think I probably went to carnival on around twenty or thirty days over the years, though I’ve not been recently. Apart from this rather odd incident I saw very little criminality apart from the widespread smoking of weed – and I picked up enough secondary smoke some days to make me rather high.

But generally there were many more pickpockets on crowded underground trains and much more violence in the crowds around football stadiums. Press reports always greatly exaggerated the negative sides of the event and I never felt unsafe. When there were reports of trouble it was usually late in the day when I had gone home.

But I did take some simple precautions – taking a couple of notes and some coins rather than my wallet and credit cards, and being more careful than usual with my photo gear. I carried less than usual and kept it in a small ex-military shoulder bag – though in crowds I carried this around my neck and in front of my body.

Attitude is also important. Some photographers seem to me to be rather confrontational but I followed my normal friendly nature, smiling, talking and at times dancing with people. Like most of the others at the event I was there to have a good time. And to have just a can or two of Red Stripe – and some of my free annual malt fix.

You can see more pictures from Childrens Day beginning here on My London Diary.

And I went back on the following day on my own for the carnival proper – pictures begin here.


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English Results & Vedanta AGM – 2012

English Results & Vedanta AGM: On Tuesday 28th August 2012 I photographed a protest by London teachers over Michael Gove’s interference with GCSE English grading before going on to Lincoln Inn Fields for a lively protests outside the AGM of London-based mining company Vedanta.


Regrade GCSE English

Dept of Education, Westminster

London teachers protested outside the Education Ministry against Michael Gove’s intervention in the grading of GCSE English results, which had moved the mark boundary between Grad C and Grade D, meaning that many students who previously would have achieved a C grade were now graded at D.

GCSE had been introduced as a system to grade students with no particular significance to the C/D boundary, but over the years has been altered by governments to make C a pass and D a fail, both for the students and also for the schools.

Students who fail to get a C or above in English (and Maths) may be prevented from goning on to further study even in unrelated subjects, and schools which fail to get passes for the required 40% pass benchmark are at risk. Some teachers may also lose pay as a result – even though their students have actually performed at the same level.

The change in the grade boundaries is seen as part of Gove’s agenda to blame schools and teachers for ‘failing’ students and provide a rationale for closing down schools run by democratically elected local councils and replacing extending the privatisation of education by their replacement by ‘academies.’

The altered grading disproportionately affects students from working class backgrounds, whose aims to better themselves through education have already been hit by this government with the removal of EMA, the educational maintenance allowance for 16-18 year olds, and by the hike in University fees.

Then NUT Deputy General Secretary Kevin Courtney speaking

The grade shift was estimated to result in an increase of around 10,000 in the number of young people not in education, employment, or training, “NEET“s. and on the same day as this protest Employment Minister Chris Grayling announced that young unemployed Londoners would be forced to do three months of unpaid full-time work or have their benefits cut.

More on My London Dairy: Regrade GCSE English


Vedanta AGM Protest

Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Mining company Vedanta, owned by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal and backed by the UK government was opposed by groups in India, Goa, Liberia, Namibia, South Africa, Ireland, Zambia and Sri Lanka because of the environmental damage, pollution and human rights abuses caused by its mining of bauxite and other minerals.

Protesters from Goa ask ‘Where have all the trees gone!’?

Vedanta’s activities had been condemned by Amnesty International and many organisations had withdrawn their investments including the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, Martin Currie Investments, the Church of England, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Dutch Pension Fund PGGM.

But the company was still supported by over 30 major banks and financial agencies including HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank, Axa, Royal Bank of Canada, Credit Suisse, J P Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Lloyds Banking Group, Nordea Bank, ICICI, Citigroup, National Bank of Kuwait, ANZ and Merrill Lynch.

Samarendra Das of Foil Vedanta speaks, John McDonnell MP listens

In Odisha, India, the smelting of bauxite had left over 10,000 displaced people landless, contaminated drinking water and devastated vast areas of formerly fertile land, with famines every year since 2007. Only widespread and determined resistance by the indigenous Advasi people over seven years has so far prevented the devastation of their sacred Niyamgiri hills.

There had been many huge protests in Tamil Nadu where their subsidiary “has flouted laws without remorse, operating and expanding without consent, violating environmental conditions, and illegally dumping toxic effluents and waste” and had overturned court decisions against them by “large scale corruption and bribery.”

The lively protest was organised by Foil Vedanta. At one point well-dressed protester who walked up to the gate leading to the AGM and threw fake blood on the pavement before rushing away.

Shareholders attending the meeting then had to step carefully over the pool of blood to go in to the meeting until some minutes later a cleaner was sent out to clear the mess.

Four of the protesters, icnluding Bianca Jagger, dressed as usual in white, had to step over it as they went in, having become shareholders to they could attend the AGM and raise questions about the company’s actions.

More at Vedanta AGM Protest


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Notting Hill Carnival – 2006

Notting Hill Carnival – On Sunday 27th August 2006 I went to Childrens’ Day of the Notting Hill Carnival, returning on Monday 28th for the main Carnival Day.

By then I’d photographed carnival over more than a dozen years and was getting to feel I had little more to say about the event, though I was still enjoying the atmosphere. I’d had to miss the 2005 event and this year was determined to do my best.

Looking at the pictures I think I concentrated more on the actual parade than in previous years, though I think the black and white images probably show more of those of us following the performers. Below I’ll include – with the usual corrections – what I wrote about the two days back in 2006.

“The big event of August is always Notting Hill Carnival, and I was there both on the Sunday afternoon for Children’s Day and for the main event on the Monday, shooting both black and white film and colour digital (though when I’ll get round to processing the film is anyone’s guess.) [By 2006 I had largely abandoned film and I think a few months later I finally decided rather than process it myself to send it to a lab.]

“Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, but I didn’t get the same buzz from this year’s event as in previous years, though most of the same things seemed to be around.

“Perhaps there lies the problem; most of them did seem to be the same, two years on from when I last photographed the event.

“Last year I tried to go, dragging myself to the station with a knee injury, but the pain was too much to continue. This year my knee held out, though I was glad to sink into a seat on the Underground at Latimer Road at the end of the day.”

There are many photographers at Carnival, and only a few of these pictures have ever got published. Among those that have is the one apparently showing a well-known football manager (who I didn’t recognise and whose name I’ve forgotten) in a line of women in costume.


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Salford Quays – August 2026

Salford Quays: Last week on 19th August 2026 we were in Manchester and took the bus from our hotel to Piccadilly Gardens where we got on another which took us to Trafford Bar. We just missed the bus we had meant to catch to Salford Quays as it took us some time to locate the right stop, but the route we took turned out to be more interesting.

Of course it would have been faster to take the tram, but we prefer travelling on buses and particularly on the top deck of double-deckers, which give a much better view, particularly from the front seats in which we sat. Another small advantage is that buses (at least after 9.30am) are free with a bus pass.

From Trafford Bar we negotiated a huge roundabout to reach Trafford Road and cross the bridge before taking the footpath around the edge of the docks on the Ship Canal. We followed this around the various docks to The Quays where we visited the Lowry.

At the Lowry we spent an hour or so looking at the exhibition of his life and work, from some early pencil drawings from when he was taking evening art classes Manchester Municipal College of Art to many of his better known paintings, before sitting down to a light lunch in the café, watching people outside walking past holding up umbrellas. This was the only rain we saw in our visit to Manchester, despite its reputation. By the time we had finished our lunch the sun was shining again.

I was surprised by the huge extent of the BBC buildings – surely they can’t really need all that! I listen to BBC radio daily, but never watch television at home so at least it isn’t my licence fee they are wasting.

We walked on to the Media City Footbridge, went on to it and then turned back to walk until the end of the footpath on the north bank before making our way back to a bus stop by Huron Basin to ride back to central Manchester. Sadly it was only a single-decker.

More from our 4 days in Manchester in later posts.


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Derbyshire – 2026

Derbyshire – On 14th August 2026 we set out for a few days of holiday in Derbyshire, staying in a ‘holiday cottage’ – a ground floor flat in the centre of Matlock.

Our journey there by train turned out to be a small nightmare. We had booked to travel via Reading, where we were to board a CrossCountry train to take us to Derby for the local service to Matlock.

Unfortunately we arrived in good time at Reading Station only to find our train on the Departures board with the word CANCELLED. I looked for the information office, but though Reading is a large and very busy station it seems not to have one, so I approached a member of railway staff on the platform and asked for advice and was told to take the next train to Birmingham New Street and change there for Derby.

It was another CrossCountry train, and as usual had too few carriages for its passengers even without extra people like us – who had of course lost our seat reservations. Fortunately I only had to stand as far as Oxford before I got a seat – about half and hour in very overcrowded train. A little over an hour and a half later we arrived in Birmingham New Street – on the minute the next Derby train was due to leave.


Birmingham New Street is the station from Hell, with poor signage and we rushed across and down what a sign had suggested was the right escalator to find an empty platform. Fortunately I spotted a train at the other end of the platform and we rushed onto it, managing to squeeze past people already standing in the crowded vestibule.

We managed to find a ledge we could perch rather uncomfortably in the luggage area at the end of the carriage. I couldn’t quite sit up straight, but it was better than standing for the 33 minute journey, though windowless and a little dark. But of course we arrived at Derby a few minutes after the train for Matlock had left – with over 50 minutes to wait for the next hourly service.

CrossCountry Trains used to be owned by Deutsche Bahn but was bought in 2024 by an ‘infrastructure investment company’. Under both it has had a terrible record. I’ve never been on a service which wasn’t desperately overcrowded with trains only having four carriages where really at least six were needed. And their services have often been cancelled or running significantly late – once 4 hours late.

Our delay on this journey was only 60 minutes – and the only good thing about this journey was that this should enable us to get a complete refund. Though it did take me around ten attempts to fill in the compensation form before it was completed without ‘unknown errors’ or refusing to accept that I had booked two ticked on the same booking reference and other silly things.

Anyway, we got there and were soon sitting in a nice small flat a short walk from where one of my sons and his family live. We spent the next four days with them, going to various places in Derbyshire, though I did also go on a couple of walks on my own around Matlock and Lumsdale. We also visited Ashbourne, Wirksworth, Bonsall, Whitworth Park and Youlgreave, and drove through many villages I remembered from my visits to Paul Hill’s ‘The Photographers’ Place’ in the 1970s – which you can see more about in http://buildingsoflondon.co.uk/pm/darbis/ Darbis Murmury. I was inspired and set going in the right direction by Raymond Moore and it really was the start of my real life in photography.

We left Matlock on Tuesday by bus to Buxton and from their onto Mancester by Northern Rail. More from our stay there in a later post. But we hadn’t finished with Cross Country Trains, and on Saturday came back from Manchester to Reading on one of these.

This time we were lucky and there was a train and we had our reserved seats and it ran more or less to time. But as usual it was only four coaches and there were many having to stand. Fortunately we had decided not to come home on the following day as Cross Country Trains cancelled ALL services on the Sunday. A total shambles of an organisation who should never be allowed to run any public service, certainly not a railway.

I haven’t captioned the pictures, but some will recognise some of the locations and may like to comment…


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Gunnersbury Park & Brentford – 2018

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
Gunnersbury House Museum – the ‘Large Mansion

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford: Another family outing on Friday 24th August 2018 took us to Gunnersbury House Museum, a free museum jointly owned by the London Borough of Hounslow and the London Borough of Ealing. It turned out to be considerably more interesting than I expected.

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
Lionel Road – now the site of Brentford Community Stadium

The 200 acre Gunnersbury estate was bought in 1925 from the Rothschild family by Ealing Borough Council and Acton Borough Council for £130,000, although it was all actually just outside their areas and in Brentford Urban District. They wanted to build over it, but the Rothschilds stipulated that all except a small part of it it was only to be used for leisure and recreation and it was opened to the public as a park by Neville Chamberlainn, then Minister of Health, in 1926.

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
The elevated section of the M4 above the Great West Rd

Development of the site as a ‘country estate’ on the outskirts of London had begun in the late 17th century when the first large mansion, Gunnersbury House was built around 1663. The estate passed through various hands including wealthy merchant and MP Henry Furnese who had noted landscape designer William Kent give the park a makeover. Next Princess Amelia, favourite daughter of George II, had further changes made to the grounds for her famous parties there, including building a bathhouse.

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
The temple is the only 18th century building remaining on site

The first mansion was demolished in 1801 and the estate was split into two adjoining estates each with a new mansion.

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
A long series of rooms faces the garden in the ‘Large mansion’

The Grade II* listing for the ‘Large Mansion’ states it was built in “1801-28 by and for Alexander Copland; remodelled 1836 by Sydney Smirke for Nathan Mayer Rothschild, the City financier and Frankfurt-born founder of the British branch of this famous international Jewish banking dynasty.”

Gunnersbury Park & Brentford - 2018
The ‘Small Mansion’ still in rather poor condition

Next door the “Small Mansion”, on the site of the former mansion was built in 1801-1802 for Stephen Cosser according its Grade II listing, though other sources place it a few years later. It was extended with a service wing in 1837-44 by eccentric “Rogue Gothic” architect Joseph Peacock (1821–1893).

The Rothschilds had two French chefs who shared this office

The Rothschilds bought the Large Mansion (now the museum) and its gardens and park in 1835, adding the Small Mansion and its grounds in 1889 to recreate the now Grade II* listed Gunnersbury Park.

Large prints from Leopold de Rothschild’s Autochromes show the place as it was over a hundred years ago – with flamingos

I walked with Linda to the park from Kew Bridge Station along Lionel Road “with some difficulty as it is now a building site and crossed the Great West Road under the overhead M4, a Ballardian trek past the old and closed castellated gate to the park to enter into a sylvan wilderness, walking past the Potomac lake and its gothic folly.”

The garden slopes down from the house to a lake

Older members of our party took a shorter walk from the underground at Acton Central. Lionel Road is now overlooked by Brentford Community Stadium opened in 2020.

Princess Amelia’s Bath House

The park is certainly worth a visit and on My London Diary you can read more about what were for me the two highlights.These were the huge Rothschild’s kitchens where meals, not generally kosher, were prepared under the supervision of two French chefs, and a display of large prints from the Autochromes taken by Leopold de Rothschild using the first practical colour photography process patented by the Lumiere brothers in 1903 and sold to the public from 1907.

I made a new picture as we passed a cafe I photographed almost 30 years earlier on our way to Kew Bridge

We ate, not from those kitchens but from the modern park café, “tasty but rather insubstantial, and if you visit and are hungry, I’d advise a side order of chips” – or a short walk to a cheaper place near Acton Town station.

The Thames and Brentford Ait from under Kew Bridge

After the meal we said goodbye to the others and took a longer walk around the park before walking back to Kew Bridge station. With almost half and hour to wait for the next train we took a short walk by the River Thames to Brentford High Street and back.

Mooring on The Hollows

You can read more about our trip to the park and the museum and see many more pictures from the day on My London Diary at Gunnersbury Park & Brentford.


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More Holiday Snaps – 2013

More Holiday Snaps: I’ve just got back from this year’s holiday and have still to really look at the pictures that I took. So for the moment I’ll share a few pictures from a week’s holiday with friends which began on 23rd August 2013. You can see many more of the on My London Diary at More Holiday Snaps.

More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Aysgarth falls

We stayed in Sowerby, the other half of the better-known market town of Thirsk in North Yorkshire. Holy Rood House had from 1979-1993 been the The Convent of the Holy Rood but in 2013 was, a Centre for Health and Pastoral Care, and we had hired it for a week during its summer break.

More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Thirsk Hall, home of the Lord of the Manor – John Bell lives here alone. The Bells have owned the manor since 1723

The pictures on My London Diary include some of our friends and some inside the house itself, as well as from out many walks in and around Sowerby and Thirsk as well as from a short stretch of the Cleveland Way, and from visits to Byland Abbey, Nunnington Hall, Mount Grace Priory and across in the Yorkshire Dales, the Aysgarth Falls and Hawes.

More Holiday Snaps - 2013
The sluice gate on the Cod Beck.
More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Near South Kilvington
More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Disused Primitive Methodist chapel at Upsall, built 1887
More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Piper Hill, Felixkirk
More Holiday Snaps - 2013
Kilburn
Byland Abbey
Nunnington Hall
Aysgarth: The lower falls
Hawes
Mount Grace Priory
Behind the house are the ruins of one of the largest and wealthiest of England’s Carthusian monasteries
Osmotherley
We took the Cleveland Way east out of Osmotherley
Finally we said goodbye to our friends and the goats at Holy Rood House and came home.

Many more pictures on My London Diary at More Holiday Snaps.


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A Day in London – 2004

A Day in London: I spent Sunday August 22nd 2004 wandering around London looking for things that didn’t seem to happen and finding other things that hardly seemed worth taking pictures of. But I did take some pictures. A few at Speakers Corner, Fast Forward a BBC Radio London event in Trafalgar Square, Gymnasts in Olympic Rings and some dancers in a dystopian vision in ‘Forward To Da Future’. Finally I went over the river back to Viva South Africa in the Coin Street Festival I’d visited the previous day.

A Day in London - 2004

Here I’ll reproduce (with some minor corrections) what I wrote in 2004 and post a few of the pictures that I took – you can see more on My London Diary here for Viva South Africa and here for more pictures from 22nd August.


A Day in London - 2004
Pipes or Art?

Sunday was disappointing. Two demonstrations I’d been told about either didn’t happen at all or were so late I’d given up and gone away by the time they did. There are quite a few things like this, people publicise events, then change their mind, or sometimes they simply get the day wrong in the announcements.

A Day in London - 2004

I wandered into Speakers Corner to find the usual guys there, mainly religious nutters, but at least a couple with a sense of humour. My vote goes to the Olive Oil Party; we are superior to the Americans because we don’t need Viagra, we have olive oil, though I wasn’t quite clear what you need to do with it.

A Day in London - 2004

Then I went to Trafalgar Square, to see ‘Fast Forward’,but it seemed to be run by BBC Radio London, and was bad news, too much agitated media-hype like silly kids TV programmes on Saturday mornings. Fast Forward really was a washout, and failed to live up to the billing. Shoreditch parade the previous day had shown what people and communities can do and the real excitement and involvement it can generate; this was more about a few people on the make, exploiting the arts establishment’s guilt about race.

There were some rather clever gymnasts performing in five hoops – ‘Olympic Rings’ – hung from a frame in front of the National Gallery, but there are only so many things you can do with a hoop.

A Day in London - 2004
A Day in London - 2004

‘Forward To Da Future’ was more interesting, with lots of kids in a dance performance, the result of a dance summer school. But the woman dancer going on about meeting a man who didn’t turn up and texting on mobile phones was ultimate trivia; wasting her dance talent with inadequate material.

I made for some real music at the second day of the Viva South Africa festival on the south bank.

Viva South Africa on 21 August
More pictures from 22nd August


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