I am far out of my armchair comfort zone. I am in the flashing red zone, the amped dial turned to maximum. I am gripped with an anxiety seizure of the highest order. I am in the thick of a stormy sea of protesters, whooping, whistling, and wailing on the streets of central London. I am checking my self-inventory for strength, stamina, and serenity.
As I march through the congested city streets, I can feel the paranoia creeping up my spine. Somewhere inside is the muscle memory of old demonstrations, been and gone. I am looking for the vans of riot police, intelligence officers and snatch-squads – but there are none, bar a handful of random coppers on the street corners. Here is the march that isn’t really happening.
It is the march that isn’t a march. A rally that isn’t a rally. A protest that isn’t a protest. They are invisible crowds of people who aren’t really here – unloved, unheeded, and unheard troublemakers and agitators – who gathered, ironically, at ‘Speaker’s Corner’ in Hyde Park, and started marching.
The invisible ones who came from all over the country to holler, vent, and chant at the sweeping new wave of draconian powers polarising societies round the world. All caught in a perfect storm of media blackouts and deaf, dumb, and blind political debate.
So, I am doing a thing. Attending a protest march, fresh out of retirement, for the first time since the halcyon days of fighting the Criminal Justice Bill tooth and nail, till it became enshrined in law. Or since the days ‘reclaiming the streets’ from the carbon commute when we parked a techno sound-system outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square and had ourselves a street party. The Nineties were a busy time for Gen X resistance, and the shadow of post-millennium authoritarianism seems to be inching closer by the day, so I am along to make up the numbers.
The march is a ‘Christmas Scrooge’ protest. A rising tide of demonstrators began by flooding the streets off Marble Arch, causing the executive cars, taxi’s, buses, and bemused festive shoppers to come to a gridlocked standstill. A thousand camera phones started busily filming and broadcasting live on the internet. Frozen in the moment, scratching my head, I wondered whether this controversial ‘Freedom March’ was on the road to nowhere land as it weaved under the glittering lights of Oxford Street.
A man dressed as Jim Carey in ‘The Mask’ sashays down Tottenham Court Road waving his yellow umbrella, as the rabid anti-vaxxers wave their megaphones, barking and ranting into the wind. Frustrated double-decker bus drivers angrily honk at will, caught stationary in the crowds, and little kids and their parents wave plastic placards spelling out their resistance to digital vaccine passports.
Anarchy and alchemy hang’s thick and conspiratorially in the breeze, as the demonstration heads south towards Waterloo, and I duck out to jump on the Tube for a prior arranged rendezvous.
And a closing passing thought occurs. Here is the great pandemic divide in motion. The onlooking crowds are baiting the protesters, and protesters are baiting the crowds. Here is Broken Britain in motion. Disrupted, hostile, and angry. At its least majestic.
Later, as the coastal bound train cuts through the city streets under the cover of night, I reflect on the day’s events in a chilled-out boozy bubble, after a couple of jars with friends at the Angel. It was a step outside the matrix, a reminder of rights and freedoms for the next generation raised on 5G, virtual reality and powerful smart phones. And, as I drift off to ZZ Top’s ‘Asleep in the Desert’, I wonder what future apocalypse we might be sleep walking into tomorrow.
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