The English used to dance around maypoles celebrating Spring and fertility and hopeful love and all of that 18th century rot. They would frolic in fields and drink toasts to bounty and taste the first fruits. Now they board up windows and call out the police and protect themselves from the anarchists who take to the streets to protest McDonalds and banks and anyone in formal business attire. It's a strange day in the capital. Happy May First.



They expect 400 anarchists. And thousands of bored slackers. Really, couldn't we learn anything about riots and protests from the French? Shake it up at least? Paralyse the nation? Viva 1968, this is what happens after post-modernism -- press coverage and Starbuck breaks. They waited for the light to turn before crossing Cambridge Circus, for fuck's sake.



Le Pen. Cripes. Anti-semitism and anti-immigration are sweeping Europe. A nutcase gets into the French presidential race and a synagogue in North London is vandalised for the first time in 40 years. What a nightmare. I blame Bush, simply because I haven't heard him blamed for anything recently. I like spite. It feels good. I don't like the Right.



Radio Four reported that the American Jewish establishment has joined forces with the Chirstian Coalition to influence the nation's policy on Israel. Talk about dancing with the devil...



I dream about work now. Haven't slept right in four days. If I look away from my monitor my eyes blur like they were smeared with vaseline. I took a sleeping pill and slept for 10 hours and now realise the depths to which I'm wrecked -- I dreamt about work in slow motion.



I would go home and watch all of the hoopla on the telly but there's the final wine class to get through with an impossible taste test I have no hope of passing and ITV Digital has gone out of business, leaving me with nothing more than the terrestrial channels everyone else gets -- lots of BBC. ITV went belly up today after realising they had gotten themselves into an impossible multi-million pound contract with the Premier League (that's soccer for you yanks) and have left thousands of people without digital television. Sounds tragic, but as the BBC is currently inundated with gardening and pet hospital programmes, digital cable was a necessity. Documentary on the Queen's jubilee tour to Southampton anyone? Or maybe billiard highlights? I better take up reading.



I flirted with a boy in a bookstore last weekend. Then realised that I had the recent Jamie Oliver book in my hand. How embarrassing. (He's become passe, if you didn't know.) The boy was buying a holiday book. I was jealous.



I also developed a rash after eating Moroccan food. My palms went blood red. It was like a dream.



It's trying to be Spring. We had two warm days, but its reverted to its cold, rainy self and we get through chilly days with wet socks and pale, glum expressions. It sounds like I'm looking forward to Summer, but I'm not. We become inundated with tourists, the Tube becomes impossibly hot, it becomes prohibitively expensive to travel and it is reminding me that a few of my friends are leaving the UK to go back to the US for good. That makes me sad.



Make an effort to make friends, make an effort to find romance, make an effort to better yourself, make an effort at work. Make an effort, make an effort. Or sit at home and watch telly. Oh wait, make an effort to get cable. Just muddle through.



My MP3 player is on a Lilith Fair kick. I think I'm becoming lesbian, but I don't have the shoes for it.



The anti-capitalist march just walk past. 200 white youths with Nike shoes, Gap clothing and Jansport backpacks followed by tens of police in riot gear. This is why we boarded up our windows?



I'm going to get a coffee. Maybe I'll taunt them with pound notes.