Good work, Wyebird
CRITICAL MASS
Tidy and I met up with about 400 other bikers by the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. It was all very exciting. A sea of bright jackets, blinking lights and the pinging of bells.
At 7pm we were off with our police escort. I wonder if they were the same cops who were learning how to jump up and down kerbs outside my flat the other month.
We toured round the Imax cinema and over Waterloo Bridge. For some reason Tidy and I found ourselves leading the mass (mainly to get away from the fella blasting out reggae music from his bike trailer as we wanted to hear our conversation) and headed down Aldwych (after the Old Bill blocked off the entrance to the Kingsland Tunnel to stop us heading up north).
A mass ‘old timer’ soon came up front and gently steered us off our route (we were going to go to Buck House) and the ride headed up to Old Street and around Hoxton, where we had fun holding up the traffic.
We fell back a bit – I think we finally got the idea, that it was a gentle ride rather than a charge through London Town – and saw that the group was made up of people from all walks of life.
There was a guy on a rather cool recumbant tricycle with a puppy dog tucked inside his jacket which was chewing on a sprig of lavender.
There was a woman dressed as an enormous pink butterfly on a tricycle decorated with flags and garlands of flowers, who was handing out the lavender.
There was an old couple on a tandem – he had grey hair and big moustache, she was dressed all in red with a matching bandana tied round her hair 50s-style.
After about an hour-and-a-half, Tidy and I dropped out and went for a curry in Brick Lane.
GREENPEACE
My dedication to saving the environment was tested on Saturday. I met the Greenpeace posse at The London Dungeon prior to our photoshoot on Tower Bridge.
As we stood there posing with campaign banners, the police turned up and started to question us. Apparently, a bus had broken down on the other side of the bridge and they were trying to find out if it was a diversion because we were going to do something exciting, or whether we were a diversion and the bus was going to … to what? Explode?
It didn’t seem to cross their minds that it was just a coincidence. Bless their counter terrorism brains.
We were given a record of our ‘little chat’. The Other Half and I chose to remain anonymous and didn’t give officer R7730 CP5 our names.
On my slip, he had described me as slim. Hurrah! An official government body recognises me as being slim!
After all that kerfuffle, the day turned very cold, rainy and miserable. I was standing down at the GLA building trying to coax people into signing the petition to turn parts of the North Sea into marine reserves to protect what’s left of the flora and fauna.
Most people were not interested.
“Would you like to sign a petition to protect the North Sea?”
“Not today, thank you”, or “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” were the most common replies.
Still I got about 20 signatures in about three hours (!). The most interested signees were a Canadian man and a homeless, who put down his postcode as SW1.
As I cycled home, frozen to the bone, I noticed the Old Bill were hiding on Tower Bridge filming the Greenpeacers down by the GLA. Have they really got nothing better to do?
Tidy and I met up with about 400 other bikers by the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. It was all very exciting. A sea of bright jackets, blinking lights and the pinging of bells.
At 7pm we were off with our police escort. I wonder if they were the same cops who were learning how to jump up and down kerbs outside my flat the other month.
We toured round the Imax cinema and over Waterloo Bridge. For some reason Tidy and I found ourselves leading the mass (mainly to get away from the fella blasting out reggae music from his bike trailer as we wanted to hear our conversation) and headed down Aldwych (after the Old Bill blocked off the entrance to the Kingsland Tunnel to stop us heading up north).
A mass ‘old timer’ soon came up front and gently steered us off our route (we were going to go to Buck House) and the ride headed up to Old Street and around Hoxton, where we had fun holding up the traffic.
We fell back a bit – I think we finally got the idea, that it was a gentle ride rather than a charge through London Town – and saw that the group was made up of people from all walks of life.
There was a guy on a rather cool recumbant tricycle with a puppy dog tucked inside his jacket which was chewing on a sprig of lavender.
There was a woman dressed as an enormous pink butterfly on a tricycle decorated with flags and garlands of flowers, who was handing out the lavender.
There was an old couple on a tandem – he had grey hair and big moustache, she was dressed all in red with a matching bandana tied round her hair 50s-style.
After about an hour-and-a-half, Tidy and I dropped out and went for a curry in Brick Lane.
GREENPEACE
My dedication to saving the environment was tested on Saturday. I met the Greenpeace posse at The London Dungeon prior to our photoshoot on Tower Bridge.
As we stood there posing with campaign banners, the police turned up and started to question us. Apparently, a bus had broken down on the other side of the bridge and they were trying to find out if it was a diversion because we were going to do something exciting, or whether we were a diversion and the bus was going to … to what? Explode?
It didn’t seem to cross their minds that it was just a coincidence. Bless their counter terrorism brains.
We were given a record of our ‘little chat’. The Other Half and I chose to remain anonymous and didn’t give officer R7730 CP5 our names.
On my slip, he had described me as slim. Hurrah! An official government body recognises me as being slim!
After all that kerfuffle, the day turned very cold, rainy and miserable. I was standing down at the GLA building trying to coax people into signing the petition to turn parts of the North Sea into marine reserves to protect what’s left of the flora and fauna.
Most people were not interested.
“Would you like to sign a petition to protect the North Sea?”
“Not today, thank you”, or “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” were the most common replies.
Still I got about 20 signatures in about three hours (!). The most interested signees were a Canadian man and a homeless, who put down his postcode as SW1.
As I cycled home, frozen to the bone, I noticed the Old Bill were hiding on Tower Bridge filming the Greenpeacers down by the GLA. Have they really got nothing better to do?
posted by The WyeBird @ 1:54 pm
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