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On my way into town yesterday found myself walking smack through the middle of someone else’s street party. Nice chilled vibe in a road bordering on an open green space in the late afternoon.
The euphoria up the line in Westminster had long subsided, leaving central London strangely deserted by the time I headed home that evening. No trace of the million revellers who’d descended on the city that day apart from a few lingering traffic diversions. And morose men in orange jackets at Hyde Park Corner dealing with the 140 tonnes of refuse they’d left behind.
In today’s Guardian Ian Jack compares the wedding with that of Charles & Diana in 1981, pointing our that in the middle of all the royalist ballyhoo imprisoned IRA men were dying on hunger strike, urban rioting had erupted in several English cities, and 2.5 million people were on the dole.
Checking the headlines this weekend, Gaddafi’s Libya is being bombarded with air strikes and riven by civil war, the governments of Syria and Uganda are killing increasing numbers of protesters, there are more riots in Bristol – and the US has just suffered its second deadliest outbreak of tornados in history, with at least 340 people dead.
Japan meanwhile has 18,000 recent deaths and widespread devastation to cope with – along with a nuclear crisis at Fukushima that remains – even according to official sources – “very serious”.
No wonder my brother’s buying himself a geiger counter.
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