It's a kind of magic

Well, all I can say is it wasn't like that when I was a teenager. Apparently it's now cool for a fourteen-year-old to be able to tell a television crew you've been sitting outside a bookshop for the last eighteen hours. Dressed as a witch. And now you are going to go home and read all night. Wild. In my day she'd've been slumped outside the local petrol station with a couple of her mates and an empty bottle of White Lightening, not sitting outside Waterstones with her mum. What is the world coming to? See what you're doing to our kids JK? Hmm?

And I now know who dies. I've not read it, but I had a flick through it in Borders. And no, it still isn't Hagrid. Apparently when she killed off Sirius in the last book she cried. Which seems a bit daft when she's the author. I presume there wasn't some bloke holding a knife to her throat saying "kill him off or else"? Oh, well. I assume her tears subsided once she looked at her bank balance. Kill 'em all off. They won't be expecting that. Make the Hogwarts Express the target of a vicious terrorist attack by, oh, I don't know, the Christian Voice? They think you're corrupting good Christian kids with the evils of the Occult (er..right, then.) Go on. I dare you.

OK, OK, I am going to read it at some point. But really...18 hours?

The Show Must Go On

I wouldn't say I'm the world's greatest Queen fan, but they have their moments, and Little Cousin and her Not-So-Little New Boyfriend had some spare tickets, and anyway, Peter Kay was the special guest.

Razorlight, supporting, were fairly good, although the lead singer seemed to have a bit of a Jim Morrison thing going on - same haircut, almost naked and quite possibly stoned. Peter Kay was simply wonderful: he came in as Brian Potter and sang "Wind Beneath My Wheels" (watch the show) and in doing so split the entirety of Hyde Park into two groups: those who had watched "Phoenix Nights" and those who were looking on in total bemusement.

As for Queen, well, they were sensational. Brian May looks like what he is - a middle-aged bloke with a Physics degree and daft hair - but isn't that what makes him cool? How wonderful that someone who used to teach astronomy and whose hair matches that of his wife can be revered as one of the world's greatest rock stars. It really does restore your confidence in the Western World which so often disappoints me in its tastes or lack thereof.

It was a strange atmosphere: the concert had been postponed from last Friday because of the London bombs, and they had released 6,000 tickets for emergency workers to come and see the show. This had also introduced a great marketing opportunity and hundreds of t-shirts that had clearly been printed before last Thursday with the original date had been hurriedly stamped with "The Show Must Go On!" and were being flogged as "Limited Editions" for double the normal price from a tent by the gates. Brian May admitted that he couldn't think of anything to say so instead they played a really good version of "Imagine" as a response to the attacks, and whatever you think of the song, 85,000 people singing it sends your spine tingling. I was pleased that they didn't just play all the corny Queen hits you usually get at the end of crap wedding discos - "Radio Ga Ga" and "Fat Bottomed Girls" was there, but not a "Don't Stop Me Now" in sight. Instead they played "Love of My Life" which is one of the prettiest songs ever written, before Brian May launched into a long, frenetic solo that went on for fifteen minutes or so and didn't seem to have a tangible beginning, middle or end. Best of all, though, was the finale. You can place bets on the fact that they will play "We are the Champions", but you wouldn't necessarily expect them to dedicate it to members of the emmergency services, London transport staff and medical staff, and show their pictures on the big screen while they were singing it. The concert wasn't about Queen, it was about them, and you got the feeling that Queen were really proud of that. Maybe this is how everyone felt singing along to Vera Lynn just as the war was ending, but the whole of Hyde Park was thinking, thank God, we're here, we're ok. And we're great. Yes, it's corny, but maybe it helped.

If you ever get a chance to see Queen (and I apologise unreservedly for shaming Joe Strummer's memory here) it's worth it. While I jumped up and down and irreversibly damaged my eardrums and vocal cords, Cousin and Boyfriend canoodled throughout and the other person I was with clapped politely at the end of each song as though he was at a cricket match. I think we all had fun.

London Calling

Well it's certainly been an eventful week. Wednesday: we get the Olympics; Thursday: we get bombed; Friday: aid to Africa doubles (and satisfies Geldof, which is unheard of!)

It's been a weird couple of days. Yesterday I got into work just before nine and sat there bemoaning the fact that my lazy colleagues were not yet in work. In fact they were all trapped in various tube tunnels in what TFL (so much faith we have in our own transport system) blamed as a "power surge." So I hung around and helped groups of confused/scared international students call their parents and figure out their routes home; then I went to Mass and wandered home.

It's very bad taste to take the piss out of something that has killed 50+ people. But here goes:

I feel if my contract is not renewed I could make myself a new career as a "terrorism expert". Loads of them were wheeled out yesterday (incidentally how do they find their jobs? You don't see ads in the Standard with "terrorism experts needed. Excellent benefits, good job satisfaction, email Les at..." do you?) and were making superbly profound statements like "Well, it seems clear that these attacks were designed to coincide with the G8 summit" (hey, no shit) "clearly these attacks took place at rush hour in an attempt to kill and maim as many people as possible" (genius!) "It is likely the bombers were either home-grown or came from abroad" (No!) and even "they have succeeded in causing disruption: the fact that the tube has closed down completely means that many people won't be able to get home."

It's also amusing (in the loosest sense of the word) how little people know London. They get on the tube where they live and get off where they work, and occasionally they get pissed somewhere in between. But yesterday they were all wandering wide-eyed through central London with A-Zs as if to say "it's...it's light....but when I come this way on the Central Line, all I can see is dark...there are actually...shops...and things..."

Seriously, though, I am amazed so few people died, I am amazed at how great the emergency services were in coping with it, I am touched by the messages abroad, and, though I shouldn't be, I'm amazed at how chilled out people seemed to be. My boss, for example, dumped a TV on the front desk and bought us all sandwiches ("When there are bombs you get free sandwiches.") He has lived here all his life and remembers the IRA. But for me, flitting round the office making tea for everyone because I'm unimaginative and can't think of a better response, it's the first time. And it's all a bit spooky.

You won't fool the children of the Revolution

One good thing about being a protester for the day is that you don't have to bother trying to make your hair look tidy, because that simply isn't part of the image you're trying to convey. Which is just as well, since mine is covered in purple hairspray and consequently has merged itself into one huge knot that laughs in the face of a hairbrush.

I spent the weekend in Edinburgh supposedly saving the world but in reality not really doing very much at all. In fact I spent a vast proportion of it (about three hours) standing in a queue actively NOT marching and getting high on other people's dope smoke. The whole event was decked out like the free entry day of Glastonbury (which used to be Sunday, where you could wander in for free if you lived in the area and hadn't already had the common sense to wander over the barriers for free on the Friday) - far more people than could really fit there crammed into a field talking about politics and eating Vietnamese noodles and Texas playing on stage, and badly-organised security. The plan was for the march to be staggered in three stages so that there would be a perpetual ring of people round the city. This was achieved early on and sustained due to the fact that they simply stood there not sure what to do next, because nobody told them, and there wasn't room to move in either direction. I hate to say it, but it made the NUS look organised. Where the NUS is always just that bit too optimistic about the potential number of people who might crawl out of bed of a Saturday morning in order to gridlock London and as such has a steward every hundred yeards or so, the self-effacing charity volunteers couldn't possibly imagine that anyone but themselves might show up to Edinburgh and when 200,000 or so did, well, it was nice, but from an organisational point of view, bugger.

It's actually quite impressive to be able to say I was part of a mass of people so huge that I didn't even get to march, but what I really couldn't be arsed with (maybe it was the four hour train journey the day before then the getting up at six o'clock) was not marching while listening to people bitching about Live 8. It does seem somewhat ironic that we were all claiming to be united in the desire to end poverty and then, smug in our own do-goodedness (I think that's a neologism, but i like it) feel we have the right to say stuff like, huh, that Geldof just wants all the attention for himself, that Geldof has taken the limelight off us. Bastard! Er...and why exactly should the limelight be on a bunch of middle-class self-defining philanthropists anyway, whether they're in Hyde Park or Edinburgh? Then the best comment of all: "they don't care about poverty, they just want a free rock concert." Yep, I entered the Live 8 Text Lottery, because I wanted to see REM and The Who. I'd be lying if I pretended otherwise. At the same time, though, it was all being done in the name of Africa, and big names are going to make the news in a way that us lot and our fair trade banners couldn't, and i don't have a problem with that (I admit I was a bit miffed at the thought of it while standing in a queue getting sunburned, but I soon got over it.) So, in answer to your criticisms:
1. If Geldof just wanted publicity, there are probably easier ways of doing it than staging 9 huge rock concerts to take place simultaneously across the world.
2. Since the G8 is taking place in Edinburgh there were no other events planned in London (or indeed the rest of the world). Most people can't spare the time or money to go to Edinburgh (and there wouldn't have been room for them anyway), others would simply not be interested in going. Live 8 meant more people took part, and that's surely a good thing.
3. Where Live 8 took the prime share of the TV coverage, people tuned in to watch a rock concert who wouldn't have tuned in to watch people meandering round Edinburgh. By default they would then have been exposed to images of our march - my mum says the coverage was pretty much 50.50 throughout.
4. Having an event that took place on a world stage is better for raising awareness than a single march in Edinburgh.
5. The First Live Aid was so powerful. People remember it, so their ears are going to prick up when they hear it again. Demos are good, but they happen all the time. I've been on student demos, anti-war demos and feminist demos and I'm not even a hardened anarchist!
6. We can enjoy that smug feeling that we had the more authentic experience, complete with a nutbar feminist speaker who spoke (extremely slowly. I'm amazed she ever gets anything done) explaining to 40,000 or so of us why she wear red, and a coffee stall that claimed to be genuinely Italian but was actually run by a bunch of Glasweigans who all seemed to be called Graeme, those previously unsung stalwarts of Italian sophistication.
7. If you do want to see the media coverage, there are some pretty good pictures here as well as coverage of the standstill - sorry, March - itself.

So really, in the grand sceme of things, bickering about who got there first and who was more worthy and who should've got the most media coverage is immaterial. Now, regardless of whether we were in Hyde Park, Edinburgh or at home watching the TV, we just need to sit with bated breath and hope that beyond all our expectations that somewhere within Gleneagles Hotel there's a shread of humanity struggling to get out. That said, having read Bush's statements in the news this morning, I suspect that is unlikely.