Gimlé

I’m sitting here munching on Icelandic candies sent by my grandmother. The package arrived on the day War broke out. She has got a sixth sense about these things, sent comfort food to both me and my sister at exactly the time we need it.

She also has a sixth sense regarding fashion and clothes sizes, but that is a different story.

Been teaching, working on my research project and protesting all last week.

Thursday was an odd one. Nobody had heard anything definite. Somebody whispered “Six O’clock, outside the Hippodrome” partly because that’s were the protesters have been every day.

Nothing certain. Nobody was sure. But people were angry and went on impulse.

Three thousand people showed up.

Give or take. Organisers (the people who led the march, got the band, conferred with the police and such) estimate four to five thousand but they always overestimate these things.

The police were overwhelmed but, despite what you’d read at the indymedia website, they handled the situation rather well, considering. Apparently the idiot element took over late in the evening after I left, but that was only after the organisers and the Bristol Samba School band (which was bloody excellent) had all gone home.

Friday, only about four hundred showed up at Six, and what seemed to be almost as many policemen. Apparently they didn’t want to be overwhelmed again.

Met up with my friend Bob Hughes whose conference I plan to show up at next Thursday (by hook or by crook). I’ll ‘blog it if I manage to wrangle out a proper ticket.

Saturday, keep in mind that all this was organised with only a few days notice, 3-10 000 people protested at USAF Fairford, around one hundred thousand people protested in London and I guess around a thousand here in Bristol. Most of the people I know went to Fairford or London.

Everything went really well here for the first couple of hours, but then the idiot element took over and about a hundred people sat in the middle of Park Street by College Green.

I appreciate the gesture. They care and all that. But I see very little use in aggravating drivers and police, especially considering that the police had been especially helpful and cooperative with the organisers earlier that day. Kept their sense of humour, though. Don’t know how long that will last if the daft buggers keep up doing silly and annoying things. Those people are very much in a minority, it’s just as it is with the pro-war movement where a vocal small percentage makes everybody look bad.

The week long silence is the time I needed to decide what to do regarding this weblog. I can’t very well ignore the war. But on the other hand we’re getting overexposed to it, as if it were some sort of game or world tournament.

So I decided only to mention the war when I do something related to the war and report that. Things like protesting or showing up at the Bristol Public Meet on monday (half past Seven, Friends Meeting House, River Street, it’s just off of Bond Street in Broadmead accross the road from Littlewoods and Primark. Anybody can show up.)

So how often the war gets mentioned here depends on my own level of activity.

Quite a few of my students have been showing up to these things, recording and photographing. Several of them intend to do projects on either the war, the war coverage or the protests. I’d really like to see some of that footage posted online.

Kicking myself for not booking a camera out of the media centre as my own camera is buggered right now.

About to head out to meet up with a few friends at the Arnolfini.

It’s gorgeous out there.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.