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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘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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