What a different day today. Blue skies and sunshine to replace the dark clouds and rain.
Spend morning and lunch with father and make way over to Trafalgar Square. Sit behind plinth in shade and notice large parrot in front of me. I find out later, that he's a regular visitor with his keeper. There's a keeper and hawk that visits in the early morning too.
There's a pretty young girl on the plinth, doing something with a rainbow coloured umbrella. Effective against the bright blue sky.
Spend an hour just sitting and people watching. It's amazing how hundreds of people are passing a) a plinther b) a large blue parrot and not noticing. This includes school parties where the teachers aren't pointing things out to the children and groups of tourists, so intent on Nelson's column, that they are missing the rest of the action in the square. Interesting.
A woman hermit comes on the plinth to pray for prisoners and I go over to the side of plinth. Start to talk to Diane, a member of security , who recognises me, and Francois, a regular temporary homeless man. The conversation turns to heaven as we are joined by a young man who is a journalist on the Catholic paper, 'The Tablet' and has come to do a story on the hermit.
The square is packed with people enjoying the great weather and some filming is going on the other side of the terrace.
A vignette of British life: Two young women around 20 come over and stand by us. They ask Security Diane what is going on when they see the cherry picker and say, in a slightly gormless way, " I wanna go on that. How much does it cost? Please let me go on that. I wanna a go on that" Diane asked what they would do? "I'd moon", said one girls. I lean forward and say, "That's been done!" God knows what they would have been like if drunk.
A scotsman comes on to talk about a new age religion and I feel it's time to go and get the train.
I have a voicemail from Katie at Radio York. She would like me to take part in a final day of the plinth discussion on Wednesday. ( I had told her that I would be down at the party.) Will ring her tomorrow.
Meanwhile, in Belfast, daughter Katie has been contacted about how the postal strike would affect her. She's been filmed at home and is on the local evening news, looking beautiful. Amazing.
