Wednesday 13th October 2010: Sirens Blaring

No, this is not a chapter in a clichéd crime-novel. One of the most significant sounds in British city life is the near-constant sound of sirens blaring. For the first couple of days, I thought that everytime a siren went off, there had to have been a crime somewhere. Or something terrible. Or a fire. Mostly the last one. Since I, for the last three years, had lived in the 'middle of nowhere', this sudden increase of sounds in general and sirens in particular has been unexpected. Still fun though. I was woken up this morning by a siren (and realised my body was aching, but didn't know why. Then I remembered that yesterday (you know, the day this blog is about), I did 10 minutes of classic drama school-type warm-up excercises. I was never good at any of them. It was a fixed, biweekly amount of pain which was, in its way, good for you. Ah well.

Yesterday (or Today, if you keep with the date of this blog) I was cycling home from campus. That morning, I was already surprised to see a substantial amount of police around the main road I use to campus. What were they doing there? Was there some kind of police outing? Were they all going to have a barbecue? It wasn't as whimsical as that. On my way back (howzat for tense-jumping?) I then saw why. A collonnade of police officers was standing in between me and the rest of my journey. I was unsure if I could continue, so I asked an officer what was going on. Apparently it was some kind of anti-war demonstration. I responded with: 'Well, that's good, isn't it?' The PC remained neutral: 'We're not here to judge son, on you go.' So I did, and continued on my way. There were several prostesters, surrounded by dozens of policemen. Around them stood camera crews and journalists. It looked a bit weird, and slightly scary.

Not a 100m further, there were about 20 people sitting down in the middle of the street, surrounded by police officers. The atmosphere seemed grim and the amount of police present surprised me. But not so much that I didn't dare to pop in to the local supermarket to get some muesli.

I later read that the reason for the demonstration was the continued production of war-materials in a factory near Brighton. If raising awareness was the goal, I think the protesters were successful (and me, now writing about it before breakfast might be partly responsible for that as well).

There goes another siren. I stopped caring I think. First signs of inter-cultural integration: Foreigner stops caring about sirens. That'll be the first chapter of my book on moving to Britain. Which I will never write. Or someone would have to pay me. Haha. I am evil.

I'll have some muesli now and finish Ibsen. Haven't you got anything to do with your life? Go out and do some work! (and after you finished, come back here. I need this!) Bye!