Thoughts of Charmin Moo

Where was I when I heard? In a field somewhere south of Gleneagles. It was about lunchtime. All the roads were locked down. There were helicopters everywhere: that’s how they got the bigwigs in and out. Big fuckers, like bloated pregnant bugs. You wonder how they get airborne. And there were police surveillance choppers. Someone said they’d commandeered the entire Met fleet – don’t know if that’s true. Rumours are like mushrooms here, springing up everywhere overnight, growing big on bullshit.

There were rumours they’d laid into the protestors by the fence ferociously – which seems likely. We’d be fair game, unlike Saturday’s celeb visitors. There were rumours of tanks – less likely. They wouldn’t want to cut up their nice golf courses.

We are on a guerrilla mission, if guerrilla means a disorganised half a plan based on scant information and insane optimism. Somebody said: there must be a back way in. Everybody said: yeah, it’s probably less guarded. We could probably, you know… All very Scoobydoo meets Dungeons and Dragons – a cunning plan to get past the trolls and onto the next level.

I thought: this doesn’t have a hope in hell of working, but it beats sitting in a road staring at a line of riot shields. Some people get off on it, shouting, making little provocative forays, getting lifted or getting someone else hit over the head, nice photo of police violence. Not my idea of fun. I’ve been down this road too often. You know what? A little secret. Protests are for the most part very boring. You see the newsworthy ones, May ’68, Berlin Wall, Tianamen Square, even home-grown Poll Tax and May Day bashes, but the truth is for every one of them there’s a hundred, possibly a thousand ones where you sit in the road going: what do we do now?

So I was up for anything. Didn’t need to feel it would work. And there was the added frisson of possibly outwitting the police. So we trickle to the back of the demo, through the police lines, which are a bit straggly, all the muscle being concentrated at the front. We walk back south, comedically attempting to thumb a lift from the police messengers.

About two miles down the road – who am I kidding, I have no idea, but we said ‘two miles’ – we saunter off into a field, going west along the trees. We know it’s west because it’s the way the sun doesn’t rise, and it’s about noon because the sun is directly overhead with very little shadow. The fact that it’s pissing with rain on and off doesn’t add to the accuracy of the orientation. The plan is to walk due west for about an hour and then circle back north. Sounds simple enough. Except the fields aren’t square: not a right angle in sight. The sun is barely visible and no fucker has packed a compass.

There’s a clatter of increased helicopter action. Makes sense: several of the Gr8 ones are due in at lunchtime. Very Important People can’t be seen to arrive early and hang around.

“Anyone got a radio?”

“What for?”

“Opening speech.”

“It’ll be bullshit.”

“Yeah, but we’ll hear if anyone got near enough to shout.”

Can you believe that no one in our little guerrilla posse has a radio. Tremble in your boots, oh Masters of the Universe, the anarchist circus is in town. Eventually someone discovers a previously unused radio function on his Walkman. After due allowance is made for retuning and getting out of the way of Scottish hills, he gets a signal.

Where was I when I heard the news? In a field south of Gleneagles, trying to lipread a clown with a Walkman in his ear. His make-up was smeared but still sufficient to exaggerate his expression. It went from that slightly cranky puzzled look, trying to get a fix on a distorted signal, to shock, horror, incredulity. He could have taught at mime school.

He was repeating the news silently to himself, as people sometimes do when they read.

“What? What is it?” we screamed at him.

“There’s been a bomb, several bombs, in London. Hundreds– ”

“What? It’s a set-up.”

“Hundreds dead or injured. Bombs on the underground.”

“No, man, no.”

Already, before we have even heard the news, we are disputing it. “Give it here. You got some police disinformation channel.”

We sit in a wet field, a defeated army, cold, ridiculous and scared. The radio is re-tuned to BBC Radio Scotland. We pass the earpiece from ear to ear, silently, bowing our heads, like communion. We don’t have a map or a compass between us, but somebody has a primus stove and saucepan hanging off her rucksack and we have plenty of water. We sit down on the wet grass and make tea.

We are divided between those, the majority, who take the news as largely factual and are sorrowful and worried for their friends in London, and a minority of conspiracy-theorists who believe it is all made up or that the bombs are the work o spooks, Special Branch, MI5, CIA…

“What, you mean they’ve killed loads of people to distract from our protest at the G8?”

“Happens.”

“Maybe it’s Tony Blair trying to get back at Ken over his Olympic triumph.”

We smile bleakly, but the spirit has gone out of us. Most of our thoughts are hundreds of miles due south.