MaW’s Blog

After the highly entertaining PoliceSpecials.com social on Saturday night, which I will not really mention any further as it’s unlikely to be of any great interest to most people and also because I didn’t get any pictures of it (although I’m still not convinced Stu’s telling the truth about the amount of vodka in my vodka and coke), I slept at Tom, Marcus and Lucy’s flat which is very nice but suffers from ventilation problems. Then on Sunday morning we headed for Holborn and my first Pagan Pride parade, organised as a precursor to the 6th Annual Beltaine Bash, a rather daunting event with stalls and booksignings and things which I didn’t go to, reasoning that I should probably think about getting my train back to Nottingham, which is another long story entirely.

Anyway, the parade itself was great fun. After gathering at Conway House in the company of some impressive puppets we mingled for a while as preparations to depart were made. Then, escorted by four rather bemused-looking but extremely useful (by means of stopping us getting run over and/or arrested for obstructing traffic) police officers, we made our way out onto the streets where we did a good deal of holding up the traffic — this state of affairs was not helped by the Morris Dancers who kept stopping to dance, but that was okay, they were having fun and so were we and it was worth it just to see the innocent bystanders caught up in our progression.

Then we approached Russell Square Gardens where, after everyone made it in there was a significant quantity of dancing to some excellent drumming by the numerous drummers who’d come along. The green man kicked it off, but pretty soon lots of people joined in watched rather scarily by another one of the enormous puppets, this one not so buxom as the purple goddess, but quite impressive when you’re walking next to her!

But then of course we had to move on and most of the rest of the photos I took were really bad so I’ll stop now.

And all this writing because I’m too lazy to get a photo gallery script!