Civil disobedience

I seem to have chosen the very worst time to decide to leave central London. Leicester Square station is packed to the rafters mostly, it seems, with people dressed in Santa suits singing 1980s pop songs in the style of a football crowd. 

A word to the wise; a song very rarely starts on its highest note, so if you start singing it on YOUR highest note, you will very quickly run out of steam!  Now, in my best and most patronising voice, I say this: When deciding where to pitch a song you're hoping to encourage friends and ruffians to join in with, it's often best to start somewhere in the lower-middle part of your voice, and then you won't need to shout!  

Anyway, despite it being the last but one shopping day before Christmas, I decided to brave the crowds and headed for the bright lights of Oxford Street, which this year are sponsored by Marmite. 

I met up with the lovely Lli at John Lewis, and before we'd noticed, it was 10.30pm. I genuinely don't know where the time went. All I know is that I now have a new close friend and a new favourite hang out, in the form of Leon on Old Compton Street. It has a downstairs which was entirely empty, even on a Saturday night, and we were able to chat for hours on a comfy sofa, surrounded by books, totally undisturbed by the growing mayhem of the outside world. It sells wonderful veggie and organic food. 

There's not a great deal more to say about today, other than that a great deal of it was spent queuing in various post offices. The queue for the post office in Highgate actually stretched all the way down the street as far as the junction with Southwood Lane, which is a good 70 metres away. People would arrive at the door of the post office and ask, with absolute incredulity, if the long line of people on the pavement, looking every bit like a bus queue, was actually something they were going to need to join. I'm afraid this is what happens when you close down the post office up in Highgate village... 

Say no to post office cuts! Actually, don't bother. The government only responds to headline-grabbing, hard-core civil disobedience these days. They do as they please otherwise, regardless of our wishes, and let's face it, none of the people standing in that post office queue today were gonna start throwing bricks through windows, were they?! Tschh.