NOPOTUS

I skipped happily off into London Town where vast crowds were gathering in a shared desire to express their disapproval of POTUS. With so many there it seemed rather silly to spend the day as a single unit and so I scanned the fluttering banners to see which group I wanted to walk with. Ahead of me was an inverted American flag and the thought of joining a group of disgruntled Americans pleased me. As I tried to make my way forward through the crowds to join the flag, I would sometimes lose sight of it, but when I did, I could see a rainbow-coloured Union Jack, and that seemed an equally attractive option.

The burgeoning crowds had been sent on a 3-sided diversion to join the back of the march so we were unable to see quite how massive it was becoming, but it did make it easier for me to catch up, and so I did. Partway up Great Portland Street I met up with flag-bearers Harriet and Gav from Gloucester (extra4), not a bunch of disgruntled Americans after all. And their stars and Stripes were indeed pinned back-to-back with the Rainbow Jack.

As we walked along New Cavendish Street I realised that it was 33 years to the day since Live Aid, and I shared this knowledge with my new friends. Gav had known it was 33 years but hadn't realised it was to the very day. The reason he had known was because his mum had not been able to attend the concert herself because she was too heavily pregnant carrying him. It seems he had not been allowed to forget the reason his mum had missed the gig.

We turned left into the much wider Portland Place where other streams of people were filtering in from both North and West. First we spotted “Goldfinger” (extra1) and moved to walk with that group and soon afterwards we increased our pace a little to join up with the “Brasstards”, a lively bunch of trombone, trumpet and tuba players accompanied by a snare drum (extra2).

Partway down Regent Street we were handed lengths of yellow “Keep Out” tape, curiously mis-spelled “***K O**”. I made mine into a sash. It seemed that a fair proportion of the march were trying to get closer to the Brasstards and a little way ahead, a group of walking bongo drummers (extra3) slowed their pace to join in with a combined performance of “Hey Jude”.

We met up with origami Trump and May (main) and we were rocking!

At Piccadilly Circus the police formed themselves into islands in the stream so that the flow of marchers were forced to separate and flow around them. I was seriously impressed by this very passive police tactic.

And after a gentle walk down Haymarket we finally reached Trafalgar Square where (Oh) Jeremy Corbyn was addressing the crowd. He was followed by other speakers but since we could neither hear what they were saying nor see them the best idea was to off-shoes and cool feet in the fountains.

I exchanged contact details with my lovely new friends and headed off into the wilds of suburbia, a happy bunny pleased with a good job done.