London was a nasty place to be tonight. Well, the middle bit anyway. Some mad fool had the idea of racing Formula 1 cars around the streets, presumably so we can pitch for a Grand Prix in the centre of the city. Kind of like a Monaco without the sea. Or the escalators that take you up onto the foot bridges. Or the egg timers that tell you when the lights are about to go green.

Of course, that meant the whole of the south east piled into the city and the streets were clogged up with clueless bumpkins bussed in from the suburbs. They swarmed over every surface - horizontal or vertical, clambering up the lamp posts, stepping out from upstairs windows to balance precariously on building ornaments, sitting on the top of traffic lights.

I walked down from the office to Oxford Circus, but having not left until half six it was already too late. The buffer of spectators was already thirty or forty deep around the head end of the road, and in the squares around the edge, where big outdoor screens had been erected to relay things to the masses, it was impossible to walk between the thousands of people that clustered before them.

The police were out in force - such a contrast to the way the Portuguese police had handled Lisbon after the country’s quarter final win a couple of weeks ago - and had parked their riot vans in strategic positions, blocking off some of the roads.

As soon as I found a way onto Regent Street, it became obvious why: there was a very real risk of a serious crush. It took me ten minutes to walk from one junction to the next, all the time pushing past people, or walking under the prone bodies of ambitious - adventurous - spectators lying flat on the girders of the scaffolding holding up the false front of what will one day be Europe’s new Apple Store.

It was dangerous and unpleasant, and as soon as I could I stepped out into a side road and walked off towards Bond Street to catch a tube home.

It wasn’t an entirely wasted evening, though. As I passed by the shops I finally got around to buying a new pair of shoes. And just in time, too. I’m off to Paris tomorrow evening for a meeting on Thursday morning and I really didn’t relish the thought of taking my battered boots along with me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 at 10:48 pm and is filed under London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.