A Bright Oppressive Day

I went to the protests in central London, chanted and sang, had my little moment on stage. My own dunderheadedness; a white haired gent crossed in front of me while I was waiting to go on. His companion asked the stewards if he could speak ahead of others. I shrugged and said sure, 'if the old gentleman wants to go before me that's fine.' The steward gave me a strange look and it was only a couple of minutes later that I realised 'the old gentleman' was our shadow chancellor John McDonnell. What can I say? His eyebrows look darker in photos...

Anyway, he didn't speak first. After I came off stage, he said, 'you're very good you know,' which was nice of him. The march was genial despite the stultifying heat, and grew more bearable when we all took off from outside Downing Street through Whitehall towards Trafalgar Square and the Mall. One part of the protest hived off towards Waterloo Bridge, where I met an old boyfriend of mine. It was thoroughly strange but OK. He married a Spanish girl 4 years ago; they are thinking of moving to Galicia if it goes utterly batshit here. I told him about my marriage and Scotland, and we discussed our lives while sat with the other traffic halters in the middle of the Bridge. It was all pleasant enough.

The march was extremely successful in terms of symbolism, awareness, and yes, disruption, but through all of it I felt a strange sense of weariness, a headache waiting to overtake me. I had water for the day, people kept coming up to me saying how much they liked my speech, my ex was pleasant company, but I couldn't help feeling depressed. After all, Boris Johnson does not care one iota for disruption unless it disrupts him and directly makes him look bad to his chosen audience; and as they are fanatics who want Brexit at any price, his wee moment as furhrer rather pleases them.

That is the realisation that I have been struggling with; that there are people who will accept any distortion of democracy, or no democracy, in order to get what they want. They never think that such a distortion could one day be applied in exactly the same way to them in order to achieve a goal they do not want, no; dictatorship is great as long as it's their dictator and it will always be their dictator.

I don't know if such folk make up the majority of the country. If they do, then experience will be the only cure and god help those they take with them. A headache hit me; I came away, arriving at Blackheath just in time for rain and a red bus.

It cheered me up a lot, until I got home and learned that the people we were buying our Scottish house from have put it back on the market. There has been a delay; the lady buying our house had sold hers subject to contract, but suddenly the people buying hers want some extra assurance about the lease or something. It's not the end of the world, just a couple of extra weeks, but this was not good enough for the people selling to us, who have been utter c*nts from the beginning, trying to demand completion in a six week period which everyone told them was impossible. The house they are trying to sell has been empty for about a year, and I am beginning to see why. If they go into every transaction demanding that it be completed within a month and a half and then pull out when it isn't, the house may well be on the market for another year. Or a year after that. It's a nuisance, but fk them. Once we have everything in place we will ask them if they want to sign or not, and in case they don't, we'll start looking at other places. I am weary as all hell, the air closes around my throat, my head feels tight all the time. Maybe the extra two or three weeks will be time enough for my own small fight against this shite, though I am meant to be working! I wish the damn house sale had gone through. I will miss my friends but I want to run to another country. Obviously right now, the Avatar of London does not quite agree with me...