Riot During the Brighton Festival

Brighton is a famous coastal town of Britain and is famous for it's lovely pier, fish n chips, Quadraphenia a film about the mods and rockers, famous artists and believe it or not poetry. Brighton today lived up to all these previous expectations and a whole heap more, maybe a little to much for my liking especially due to the recent news about protest riots.

The next two weeks Brighton will be the host of a May festival of art, theater, comedy, poetry, raves and sun bathing not forgetting the regular copious amount of alcohol consumed along the white coastline of Britain's south coast. Now I did not know this until I arrived at Brighton railway station.

My real reason for going to Brighton today was to support a friends art in St Paul's Church, he and his partner were two painters who contributed to an exhibition compiled by many artists from all over Britain. Tonight was the opening night and I was excited about attending although the previous dilemmas that occurred on the opening day of Brighton's art festival was most unexpected.

Before attending the exhibition I had two things on my mind, one was taking a stroll down Brighton Pier, the other naturally is fish and chips. I took a stroll along the stony beach and watched the waves for about half an hour it was very windy so it was lucky that I brought my big hooded jacket. I felt snug in a bug with a rug with the wind blowing inside my hood like an old fashioned salon hairdryer. I strolled along the side of the pier avoiding the arcade, admiring the seagulls hovering below the perapass of Brighton's Pier.

Then I did a lap of Brighton's pier all the way to the end where young and old were enjoying the funfair including; the dodgems, the coconut shy's, the roller-coaster, house of horrors, trampolines and even a big dipper. To then come back on the opposite side of the restaurants and dough-nut shops and gamblers to again be intrigued by the hovering seagulls, their flight fulfilled my expectations of life at the beach and made me feel very peaceful.

So when I left the gates of the pier to see hundreds of people crowded in the middle of the crossroads of Brighton's busiest road called Grand Parade I was naturally very curious to just what was going on. The traveling dreadlocks and dogs, kids, camera's, press and lots of Police with round rubber black shields soon led me to understand this was a protest. I believe it was a stop the war protest, a bit to chaotic to be a G20 affair, but organized enough to over power the police powers.

It started with a shuffling of salubrious characters, then the squidgy squashed empty orange peels began to fly, abuse was politely exchanged between static travelers as a white dread-locked male squeaked past me with his tape deck turned upside down on top of a green wheelie litter bin on wheels and like the Pied Piper his traveling friends followed him; one of them scoffing on a caramel waffle with a cup of coffee and a white lid.

Then the riot shifted up a pace the police began to assemble like pieces on a board of war reenactments, the number of orange peels flying increased in number, twas then that a red flare went of, simultaneously a masked man all in black climbed the flag pole in the middle of grand parades crossroads, surrounded by protesters and police alike in the inner circle. On the outer circle traffic like big coaches were stagnant, and at each road were many police vans. All along the watchtower of the pier more vans, fleets of police and black rubber shields, each policeman brandishing huge numbers on their shoulders. They were being harassed by cameras from mobile phones, VCR's and other You-tube DVD material.

The vans began to clear the road, driving towards the crowd, the crowd overpowered the big white van, they used video camera's like weapons, it all was very pleasant the protesters are far more well behaved than they are in London, however their peaceful methods were far more effective. They then began to apply pressure on the police on foot with the black rubber shields pushing them back into their units posted on the promenade, they pushed them back about 100 meters, one guy dived down the line the police and protesters met, this was the first time defense seemed to be arising. I looked at my watch and realized I'd been hypnotized by the whole atmosphere for about 45 minutes and it was at this point I remembered about my favorite tradition fish n chips, so I shuffled to the nearest chippy leaving the police and the protesters to sort out their differences, and on my way a green and yellow ambulance flew past me to catch up with the rioters.

I couldn't help but think the worse, but luckily a chippy on the prom saved the day. Fish, chips, mushy peas and a can of coke with a straw this substantially cured my hunger and thirst it's heavy duty all these these Bank Holiday's here in Britain. Needless to say I left that chippy satisfied and had almost forgotten about the harrowing riots of Brighton that had occurred. Not far was my friends exhibition along with many other artists, the press were there also, along with Brighton's finest poet who did a sing-a-long and a poem from the churches pulpit, in front of the biggest, brightest, most golden crucifix I've ever seen. All in all it was a good day, Brighton is always fun and I believe you can drink anywhere.