crowds

I got lots of opportunity to watch the crowd at the Arctic Monkeys' gig in Manchester this weekend. There were moments when I was almost terrified. SO many people in one place and very narrow exits - I felt quite overwhelmed by the power all these people had together, and all the panic and squashing that would happen if everyone got scared and tried to get out at once.
There were some drunk boys playing with a football which was very annoying to begin with because they kept hitting people, but because they were so drunk and kept falling over it turned into between-gig entertainment. They were wonderfully disobedient and the security people in yellow coats failed completely to get the ball off them. One poor lad of about 17 in a yellow coat bravely marched in and grabbed the ball and all the crowd booed him, and he went very red. He was accosted by crowd members who tried to get the ball from him and of course one succeeded and threw the ball back into the arena and everyone cheered. The security all slunk off. It was a defeat to the stoppers-of-fun and a victory to being silly.

I wondered - if there was a real crisis - a fire - someone with a gun -how nice would people be to each other? Would we all look out for ourselves?

I queued for 2 hours to use the toilet and was very close to just weeing where i stood. I thought how easily we could all lose our polite conventions when our basic urges need satisfying. I saw a woman wee once - in the middle of the high street - right in the middle of the road - it was really shocking - and everyone (including me) completely ignored her - pretended she wasn't there. Amazing! Something so shocking - though we all glare and look annoyed if someone just swears at a child in the street, or bumps into us - I suppose some things we just don't know how to deal with. I think it was more shocking because she had no shame, and it was a busy street. A man weeing by the wall is somehow far less difficult to deal with - very sexist.

hmm

ALex's My Space page

Alex's music

gaps

It doesn't stop
but it sits with me
in the gaps
between things that
happen

At the moment I am working
for fewer gaps

And I am looking up a lot
so I can't see them when they come
so I keep falling in

The gaps are the same shape as me (almost)

This is a very useful list of terms and abbreviations on the Trade Justice Movement website.

http://www.tjm.org.uk/events/lobby/jargon.shtml

I am finding remembering them all very difficult. I had a student who asked me for specific examples of trade injustice and they all slipped my mind - except for some vague ones about tomatoes and rice.

Must find some.

Wine
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ecology-foodwithoutfrontiers/article_1756.jsp

A spider just went splat onto my desk after dropping off the ceiling. I don't like it at all. It's not a big spider but it looks different to other spiders i have seen - kind of thick and sinister. It has crawled under some papers which i dare not move, but i cannot think about much else now - what if it has creapt round the edge of the desk, up me and is now sitting in my hair, laughing?

Funny that no matter how serious and consuming big important life things can be, little things like thinking about lunch, feeling annoyed at the rain, really needing the toilet, seeing a spider.... can totally distract me for a few moments. I wonder if I could fill my life so full of distraction, most of the pain would go away for most of the time.

Oh - where is it - what if it is a poisonous spider that escaped from a box of bananas flown in from somewhere exotic and it will bite me and i'll never get to say all the things I want to to people I love.

My hairs are standing on end.

Exciting things used to be simple. Dinosaurs crushed the winter trunks a few feet in front of me and never saw me on the top of the log. There was a huge sun one night. I saw it through my window and it had smaller stars flying from it, and i was 8, and i was excited about that for a long time.

Now exciting wonderful things are not simple a lot of the time - although some exciting things still are - some of the best ones.