Protesting the truth

The two policemen scan us as we jostle past them on the footbridge to the London-bound platform, searching perhaps for the spark of recognition in our faces. There's a little part of me that wishes it was me they were looking for, in a kind of Bond-esque way where they'd transport me under discrete escort to the head of MI5 who'd beg me to crack codes and infiltrate a ring of golden-toothed baddies. Quite why the spooks would seek out a trivia-writing, sometime sudoku and crossword devotee with rudimentary French is not clear. But I'm ready and willing just in case. Queen and country, James, Queen and country.

Instead of which I pass them without as much as a glance from under their hat brimmed eyes and take up my seat on the opposite side. A few minutes later, they walk by arm in arm with a young woman in a pink sweatshirt and jogging pants. Somehow I don't think she got the part of the Bond girl either.

The walk from Victoria Station to my meeting place in Great George Street takes about twenty minutes in heels and I'm beginning to regret my optimistic spring morning notion of leaving home without a coat. But I soon forget about the brisk wind and numb toes when I climb up the steps into the home of the Institution of Civil Engineers. The Grand Hall on the first floor is simply breathtaking, dominated by two huge crystal chandeliers and a painted ceiling perhaps 30 feet above our heads. I'm supposed to be looking at the exhibits before the conference starts but I sip my tea and stare at the glorious rich wooden panelling and the painted frescoes for the fifteen minutes before the gong goes and sends the shuffling crowd into the lecture theatre.

If it's not quite as grand as the Hall then it only lacks by comparison. All around are carved and painted the names of the heroes of civil engineering: the spirits of Myddelton, Dudley, Newton, Savery, Newcomen, Darby, Brindley, Smeaton, Brunell, Rennie, Murdock, Cort, Arkwright, Watt, Bramah surely rest in perfect peace in this perfect room, panelled like its grander neighbour above seats of plush green velvet and topped off with a great black and white glass central dome.

On the stage, someone's droning on in streams of acronyms and abbreviations and I'm doodling in my pad when half a dozen people leap onto the platform and start shouting. They're young students, perhaps Roo's age, protesting at the announcement today of stringent cuts in university funding. They unfurl a home-made banner as the power to the microphone is cut and two burly security guards jump in with what I feel is unnecessary brusqueness. The organisers try to usher delegates out as the protesters, as if on cue, sit down as a body and chant from behind the podium and wall of bodies as the room empties. Half of the people on the stage are attempting to reason with the students, half to push them out and I'm not the only one to comment to my neighbour that they should be allowed to have their say; nothing is worse to my mind than those with no opinion and surely this is part of what being a student is all about? When they finally march out of the room ten minutes later, still chanting, still waving their banners, the two of us delegates left in the lecture theatre stand on the steps and clap as they pass and I find I have tears in my eyes.

Great George Street lies just off Parliament Square and I set out after lunch to breathe in the air of politics in the shadow of Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster. The stooped bronze figure of Winston Churchill, captured here for eternity in his later years, leans on a cane above a crowd of Tamils protesting at genocide in Sri Lanka. An open-fronted shelter sheathed in blue plastic sheeting flaps in the wind as half a dozen men sit hunched under brilliant white duvets. A hand-made placard tells me this is day seven of their hunger strike. Next to them, the quiet tented string of the long running peace protest; their focus: the war in Iraq and the situation in Gaza. I stand watching them from the other side of the road, leaning on some railings and smoking a cigarette with my back to Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. There's a part of me that longs to see a politician of any persuasion pull up in a car and speak to the protesters who are just yards from the House, but of course it doesn't happen.

Instead I flow on down Whitehall, bristling these days with discrete security among the crowds. The magnificent ministerial buildings have closed iron shutters just visible behind the opaque white voile curtains that hang in the handsome windows, and ornate balustrades and low walls grow up out of the middle of the wide pavement. Pedestrians and school parties chatter and stream around them but there's no mistaking their purpose as crash barriers. On past the Cenotaph, strewn with poppy wreaths at its base and giving thanks To The Glorious Dead and the newer charcoal coloured polished granite memorial To The Women of WWII.

I pass the end of Downing Street. When my mother first left school and worked for the Inland Revenue in London nearly fifty years ago, she recalls that you could still walk along Downing Street and past the Prime Minister's door. The beautiful road is artificially empty now, an oasis of still in this bustling arterial thoroughfare thanks to the massive glossy iron gates at the end. Here the police are very much in evidence, armed too in this location, with pistols in hip holsters or cradling large sinister looking weapons in their arms across the body like a baby.

I keep walking, drawn along by the crowd. Two mounted policemen chat to each other in the bus lane, their horses' hooves oiled as glossy as a raven's wings. To my left, three soldiers of the Household Cavalry stand outside Horse Guards Parade dressed in their ornate uniforms of red and black and white and gold. Two are astride a pair of shimmering huge black horses who toss their heads and stomp huge impatient feet in longing for the battlefield or the gallops rather than the constant snap of cameras. The scent of the animals mingles with diesel from buses and vans and the sweet sweet smell of trees and blossom; London's signature perfume perhaps.

An advertisement outside Trafalgar Studio Theatre is offering discounted tickets for this afternoon's matinee performance of The Last Cigarette, and I am tempted. But my eyes pull me on to Trafalgar Square and I flow on again with the tourists. Dominated on one side by the National Gallery and in front by Nelson's Column punching its triumph into the sky, the whole thing is protected in the centre by four vigilant magnificent monstrous lions and girded by ever-circling traffic. Yet I feel it's diminished since my childhood. No more grain sellers and the sooty staining on the buildings' stones has been washed away by successive improvements and revamps. No more children throwing handfuls of corn and laughing with delight at the pigeons feeding from their hands. No more family photo albums capturing a delighted child with a pigeon standing on his or her head. Only a few birds remain and the fountains are empty of water today.

I walk on by, passing the National Portrait Gallery - one of my favourites - and then into Charing Cross Road. London's booksellers' row of tradition, but with space for other singular traders too - coins, stamps, medals - and run away side roads stuffed with antiquarian books and bars. I stand in the doorway of a closed down bookshop with whitewashed windows and smoke a cigarette. It's not down and out here yet for these traditional traders but I wonder how many of the booksellers will still remain in another ten years.

The cafes start to take on an oriental flavour now as I edge into China Town and the road names are bi-lingual English and Chinese. I check the time on my mobile phone, crossing over to re-trace my steps on the other side of the road. By the time I reach Downing Street again, another protest has set up opposite the gates on the other side of the road and is chanting slogans across four lanes of buses and taxis. As I stand watching, an immaculately dressed white haired man of about 60 slips out from behind the road's security cordon and joins me on the pavement. He has an open smiling face and when he asks me what they're protesting about, his eyes sparkle as much as his soft Irish accent. We peer across and can make out the words but not the cause, although the protesters are all women and accompanied by a giant stuffed bear.

By the time I reach Parliament Square again, I've been walking for an hour and a half and am grateful to sit for five minutes on a wall facing the House. Behind me, Tamil protesters are queuing for lunch at a makeshift food stall and talking in small animated clusters as they eat with plastic spoons from paper plates. I slip back into the conference with enough time to grab a cup of coffee and take my green velvet seat before the afternoon session starts. I think the idea behind the extended two hour lunch break was networking, not rambling, and the lessons intended to be taken away from the conference quite different from those I've observed. Never mind; the delegate pack has a CD-ROM of all the presentations on it just in case I feel the urge.


Photo of Winston Churchill and protesters in Parliament Square taken on my mobile phone.