today in londinium...
In the five hours I worked today at the Galley, there was a grand total of six customers 8| My favorite newbie, Freddie, has stopped working for the owners. Not sure why, but I think it may be his studies. But a sweet new-new newbie, whom I shall call Fluttershy, was in today with me and Nana O. and Gaga, so it was a pleasant afternoon of catch-up prep and not much else. The eerily un-crowded streets of Covent Garden were likely due to a combination of:
The nation's largest day of public sector strikes since 1926 today, which had a fantastic turn out and is looking to be perhaps a long-term Thing rather than a one time flipping-the-bird-and-going-home for the next year or ten...
And the Occupy London group that managed to storm Picadilly Circus around the time I was getting out of work.
This morning as I walked in I passed union groups on nearly every street corner, and the police vans and news copters were flocking towards Trafalgar Square and Parliament when I made a supply run to the Poop Deck earlier in the afternoon. This was the scene just a block away from where I work, just about half an hour after I left. The number of reported police around Haymarket compared with the Occupiers' numbers is just rigoddamndiculous, but that being said, it's almost as unbelievable that there wasn't more outright violence on the part of the authorities. I've heard a lot of people in the last few days remarking on the horrific attacks against Occupy camps in the States, and claiming that things like that couldn't happen with the London or other British police forces, but I would not bet any money on it. The prime minister and other big cheeses are making some pretty stinky hardline statements over the strikes and the unrest and justified anger people are expressing through grassroots activism, and I just hope that they'll back off and NOT follow America in this as they have in healthcare "reform" and the dismantling of their education system.
Also, in a small pub in Farringdon, amongst a group of fellow writers - many of them having participated in today's strikes, or been made redundant in the previous year - tonight on the 30th of November, I scored my first win on my second attempt at National Novel Writing Month. 50,179 words. And there's still loads more story left.
The nation's largest day of public sector strikes since 1926 today, which had a fantastic turn out and is looking to be perhaps a long-term Thing rather than a one time flipping-the-bird-and-going-home for the next year or ten...
And the Occupy London group that managed to storm Picadilly Circus around the time I was getting out of work.
This morning as I walked in I passed union groups on nearly every street corner, and the police vans and news copters were flocking towards Trafalgar Square and Parliament when I made a supply run to the Poop Deck earlier in the afternoon. This was the scene just a block away from where I work, just about half an hour after I left. The number of reported police around Haymarket compared with the Occupiers' numbers is just rigoddamndiculous, but that being said, it's almost as unbelievable that there wasn't more outright violence on the part of the authorities. I've heard a lot of people in the last few days remarking on the horrific attacks against Occupy camps in the States, and claiming that things like that couldn't happen with the London or other British police forces, but I would not bet any money on it. The prime minister and other big cheeses are making some pretty stinky hardline statements over the strikes and the unrest and justified anger people are expressing through grassroots activism, and I just hope that they'll back off and NOT follow America in this as they have in healthcare "reform" and the dismantling of their education system.
Also, in a small pub in Farringdon, amongst a group of fellow writers - many of them having participated in today's strikes, or been made redundant in the previous year - tonight on the 30th of November, I scored my first win on my second attempt at National Novel Writing Month. 50,179 words. And there's still loads more story left.