Gotta Go Home

I spent most of Saturday in places I didn't want to be, feeling slightly ill. The kitchen, far too early in the morning, bolting down an extremely ill-advised fried breakfast. The coach up to London for two hours, stuffy and humid, feeling a fried egg slop around in my stomach. The streets of central London, walking amid hundreds of banners, absorbing the cold and the smog. Hyde Park with sore feet. Ending with another two hours on the coach, dehydrated and aching.

I hate travelling. I especially hate travelling on coaches. In this case, with a lot of young socialists slowly getting over hangovers.
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The demo itself was orderly and uneventful. We estimated 50 to 60 thousand people there, which is respectable. Actually it's a bloody big turnout, but we've all got spoiled by enormous demos in recent years.

The police estimate was 10,000 - which shows they're sticking to their line of dividing their real estimate by five for public consumption.

Odd that the media image of 'ten thousand hardened and irrational fanatics' should sound comforting to Mail readers. Half that number of genuinely hardnosed and dedicated fanatics could storm parliament in a few hours. If they all happened to be in central London at the same time...

Actually there was a group of 10-20, walking along with us and handing out leaflets. Chanting "Nine-eleven! inside job!" - their leaflets 'prove' (i.e suggest) that the CIA hijacked the planes on 911 and MI5 blew up the london tubetrains a few months ago.

Mad conspiracy theorists aren't unknown, but a well organised group of them, enthusiastic and demo-savvy, appearing out of nowhere. That's distinctly odd.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/archives/london/index.htm
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Mother and I have the same health problems. Being overweight, frequent tierdness, and joint pains, especially in the legs. So either we're both diabetic (which is possible - there's family history), or we're both just desperately unhealthy.

We've decided the join the rest of the progressive world in vegitarianism and Only Eating Proper Food. OEPF means nothing in the 'convenience' (aka 'microwave') range, and nothing whose sole selling point is it's cheapness or being 'low fat' (aka 'high sugar').

She can take Dino for long brisk walks, and I can climb lots of imaginary stairs. But the emphasis at the moment is on Not Eating Junk Anymore, and Only Eating Proper Food.
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Tonight was spent once again plonked down in front of Christia C's ancient computer, and in the company of her ever expanding circle of eccentric family and friends.

120MB RAM, 8GB HDD, c200MHz. Windows 2000 crashes, so I installed Windows 98 (twice). Now it doesn't crash - nor does it recognise the modem. It's second hand, more than a decade old, and in an area subject to random power cuts. And she can't afford a new one.

Why is it I only get to see my friends when attempting repairs on unrepairably old and battered computers? It's like I only get to see the outside world reflected in someone else's blue screen of death.

Anyway. For some reason, four hours of work culminating in failure is more tiring than four hours work ending in success. So, I sleep, probably to dream of placards printed with Windows error messages.