- Sat Sep 23, 2023 10:01 pm
#53401
The Berlin Marathon takes place tomorrow. It is nigh on impossible to get a flight in to town and has been for days. The 50.000 runners will only dump about half a million plastic cups on to the streets, as the globally-wired helicopters whirr overhead.
Our Just Stop Oil movement, the Klima Kleber ( trans: superglue yourself to the road for the sake of the climate), are miffed and have vowed to disrupt it. Our newish conservative mayor, in his deliciously cut Jermyn Street shirt, has deployed Herr Plod en masse.
It's already getting ugly.
The Marathon course passes but a few hundred meters from us and the Klima Kleber - also known as the Last Generation - tried a dry run this afternoon. Plod pulled them in to church - A FUCKING CHURCH! - to check their ID and then let them on their way. Tooled up lawyers jumped in to spring them on the basis that being who you are is allowed under the constitution.
The LG then made their way at a snail's pace to Potsdamer Straße and then proceeded to glue themselves to the busy junction where I get our fruit, veg and herbs, and where sex workers take their clients into a four-storey sex supermarket for a couple of lines and a blow job. Needless to say, a police presence in the area is not summat we are used to. Nurse Ratchet, my physiotherapist, was out walking the hounds and was filmed giving the aggressive officers dogs' abuse. I like her, always have.
Upshot: The press are losing their minds, the cops are calling for army back up, and the city is pleading with runners not to batter any activists live on global telly. "There is a record to broken", I kid you not.
We have broken enough records this year, ta very much, so I just wish the activists every ounce of success. If I was agile enough, I would be with them.