but here goes

last friday was my birthday and we had a fun, if very drunken night. Woke up on saturday morning with donna and decided that it was a good idea to get up, don some swan feathers and go to the make poverty history march… didn’t sober up until about 3pm. despite my cynicsm over the politics (or lack thereof) of the march I’m glad I went. At about 10.30pm we went down to the meadows and shot some stuff at dusk - very surreal.
Sunday was the g8 alternatives summit. Filmed an interesting if not very busy workshop about trade unions - there was a speaker from costa rica - a bannana plantation worker who had lost his job after joining a trade union but who had since been instrumental in stopping costa rica from signing the americas trade agreement. Really brought home the reality of the need for fair trade (which is clearly the point that will not be agreed to by the G8). Esp. significant that these workers are employed by huge multinationals.

Then there was a workshop on young people which was very well attended and had a lot of energy. Some complaints that the panel was all male and the chair (who despite ahving no similar experience did a great job ) tried to address this by priviledging girls from the floor - kinda sad that this is even neccessary esp as the all male panel seemed a pretty accidental thing. Will be interesting to see if anything comes out of this meeting - lots of talk on how young workers and students are oppressed - the need for new kinds of unionisation, asbos, and the need to globalise or at least internationalise resistance.

After the summit (well left early acutally) I went to an incredibly moving ceromony on carlton hill organised by the stop the war coallition in memory of those who have died in iraq, palestine and afghanistan. Met a fascinating man on the way up who despite being 85 and struggling to get to the top of the hill was determined to do his reading. He turned out to be Hughie D’arcy who was the leader of the trade unions at one time.

I was on the panel of a docspace seminar on monday evening on mainstream and indy media. Far too big a panel but it was interesting although the large audience were weirdly quiet. Then went along to see how our guys filming the demonstrations were getting along - it was all getting kinda nasty witha lot of drunk kids that seemed to have come down for the crack. The policing however was completley absurd, everytime things quietened down riot police charged the crowd - and got the expected reaction.

Watched news online yesterday with horror as london’s tragedy unfolded. Totally respect Ken Livingstone’s speech - this was not an attack on the g8 but on ordinary working people.

I’m going to see Sigur Ros tonight, saw them a couple of years ago - stunning live performance. Haven’t really listened to them for a while but I’m still pretty excited.

And then tomorrow I’m off to ireland where my parents have rented a cottage. Hoping for a nice quiet week to get some reading done - appropriately I’ve packed ullyses for some intensive re-reading.
I’ll be back in a week or so.
Ys
xxx