Girder

This might not be a girder, but the word is quirky so I’m using it.

It was an unbeatable day in London in terms of weather and I walked a long route along Regent’s Canal from Camden to Victoria Park. I observed that young people in the UK say the word ‘literally’ a lot.

People gathered in clusters to paint watercolours of barges and canalside scenes, and I had a delightful chat with someone from the Canal and River Trust (or she may have been a street chugger representing them).

The inhabitants of the canal are a hotbed of liberal politics. The sheer randomness of campaigns plastered on the towpath such as stickers I saw for ‘Save Bishkek Trolleybus’, a movement which aims to preserve Bishkek's (capital of Kyrgyzstan) trolleybus system, which is facing potential replacement by electric buses. The Kyrgyz community in the UK must be thriving and very passionate and I regret not giving trolleybuses more custom when I visited in 2013.

Other graffiti spoke to the genocide in Gaza, the tragedy of our time being played out in full view of the world. I agree with the sentiment posted here about the BBC’s coverage of the destruction in Gaza, which has been woefully disproportionate. Continued evidence of the dehumanisation of Palestinian life by the western media and western world in general.