Finsbury Square Occupy London protest

Finsbury Square is five star accommodation compared with St Paul's. There's plenty of space, and grass rather than cobblestones, so the campers here don't have to stick their tents down with gaffer tape.

Clem, 17, polite, cheerful, comes from Harrow. He's at college studying music in performance - guitar, keyboards, voice: 'It makes people happy.'

He gets the first, wheeziest drawing of the day.

'Do you know about Greenham Common?' I ask him.
'Yeah. The Suffragettes.'
'CND? The Aldermaston march?'
'Educate me.'
I need to leave my assumptions at the door. But there aren't any doors here.

The kitchen tent is bulging with food, much of it donated. Robert says he is 'pretty new to England': he grew up in Australia. He plays jazz guitar and is going to train to teach English as a foreign language. 'This is one of the biggest global protests ever - 980 cities worldwide are involved,' he says. 'I'm making a kind of dhal. It's got lentils, cardamom, clove, curry leaves, cumin, turmeric, no chilli as some people don't like it, ginger, garlic, onions, carrots and potatoes. And a little salt.' The camp isn't vegan though. The freegans go out to forage in the evening.

'How long are you staying?'
'Until we're forcibly evicted or we change the world, whichever comes first.'

Someone walks in. 'What's for breakfast? Smells lovely.'
'It's lunch.'
'What time is it?'
'Twelve thirty.'

Marianna, who is also working in the kitchen tent, grew up in Italy and is half French, half American. She thinks the camp is important for 'people who are not likely to join. People who don't agree and can't envisage an alternative - it gives them an idea that an alternative is possible.'


Outside, protesters are using a megaphone to address passers-by. Rhodri, who is 'working within it all', says, 'I'm not sure it'll change anything but it's a fresh opinion.' He likes gardening, the theatre, being with his family. He says that's all rather ordinary. To me he sounds content and blessed.

'Will you draw me next?' says Adele, who works at Progress Software round the corner. 'They won't change anything. They're giving it a good go though.'

Adele's colleague agrees. 'Fair play to them. It'll make no difference whatsoever. It'd be nice to think so though. I'd say keep going. Not everything happens in a day. They'll make people more aware of injustice. I don't agree with what you're doing but good on you.'

B

B, another onlooker, says, 'I'm so glad I'm not 15. The new world is starting in 2012 and it's gonna be horrible. Nostradamus said that in 2011 the economic state of the world will be down and there'll be rioting in the street. Take me now Lord! Hold on to your soul, let love grow.'

On the edge of the group of onlookers are three of the pantomime villains. 'I'm being sketched,' David says to his companions. 'Not really,' I say. 'You moved.' He moves back to where he was to allow me to carry on, but after a few seconds he says, 'We have to go now.'
'Where do you work?'
'RBS.'


Francesca has been megaphoning the pavement crowd. 'I was educated at the International School in Milan and then went to Japan with my family. I finished my masters in international development in September and now I want to learn more about the world.'

Her friend Simon is visiting the camp: 'If you're not careful your options narrow very quickly and you start to wonder how people can do anything other than academic or business jobs.' He is an American, working for the Nigerian government.

Francesca is living in a squat in Tufnell Park and works with Squash (Squatters' Action for Secure Homes). She plans a nomadic life.

'This camp started organically,' she says. 'There was a march then some people said, camp! Working groups started. Leadership doesn't necessarily mean being in charge. The kitchen and dealing with donations were the first things to be organised, it was really fluid.'

If there is a leader, I don't find anyone who claims to know, or who is bothered about not knowing.

Some snatches:

'There's no leader here but there is at St Paul's.
'Who's the leader there?'
'I don't know.'

'Will there be a third and fourth camp?'
'Someone said the South Bank and Canary Wharf but I don't know who's in that group.'

'Is anyone in charge?'
'I think it's the guy wearing the bunny ears.'

Angella-Dee says: 'I've lived on a peace camp in Cheshire. It's character building. You can live without money. I've been an anarchist all my life. They've only just caught on here.'

Greenham Common? 'I was there too. We started all these rumours that we'd dug tunnels into the RAF airbase.

'And I was at Beanfield. But you mention it now and you're talking at a blank audience. We got mashed up by the police. They smashed the shit out of us and put us all in prison. Here' - she glances at the police vans parked nearby - 'we just get looked at.'

A note for spotters: her bike is a copy of a Schwinn cruiser, given to her by a film editor who won it in a competition.

A little girl comes up to me and says: 'Do you know where my real mother is?'
Uh-oh.
But then a young woman strides over and says: 'I'm her legal guardian. Her real mother is over there.'

It spits with rain. A disembodied hand reaches out from the bottom of a tent flap and stubs out a cigarette.

Inside the first-aid tent is the quasi-religious hush of needlewomen. Three girls are stitching yellow and black letters to electric blue mesh. It's a banner which will say ALL POWER TO THE SPARKS. It's for tomorrow's demonstration of electricity workers. I crassly ask Alexa what she does 'in real life'. She says: 'This, in different contexts.'

I meet a man from Suffolk on his second visit to London: 'I looked round and thought, the buildings get that big? I don't like London. Everyone's hard apart from the people here. My wife says I go back Friday or not at all. Why don't you stay at the camp? We've just had 12 duvets donated.'

An electronic piano has appeared in the kitchen tent which is getting very jolly.

I wander along to the library, a few open-air shelves of paperbacks. Imperial Ambition by Noam Chomsky, One Day by David Nicholls, Cityboy: Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile by Geraint Anderson, Flying by Kate Millett (which would have been to hand at Greenham), Things Can Only Get Better by John O'Farrell.

An email of headlines comes in:
Buyout multiples rise on technology bet
Private equity takes steps towards transparency
Banks are back in takeovers

Occupy London protest outside St Paul's

I walk through St Paul's cathedral to the crypt cafe and find myself tearful for complex reasons, but the acceptance found here, the sense of freedom of worship and the freedom not to worship at all are at the heart of it.

Saskia says she felt very safe sleeping in her tent outside the cathedral last night, surrounded by others and not far from the banner saying CAPITALISM IS CRISIS. 'This is the first time I've been able to take part in the international debate,' she says. 'It wasn't possible while my daughter was growing up. And now we've got the technology. I've just been texting protesters in Hong Kong.'

A well-groomed man introduces himself as a reporter for Iranian television and asks if he may interview Saskia. She declines, as he is not clear about who and what he represents. We say we are surprised that, as a journalist, he claims not to have heard of women such as Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani who may or may not still be sentenced to death by stoning, and whose lawyer is reported to be in prison. He looks away and says that all states have their own problems. Then he smiles a lot and flatters my drawing. I ask to draw him. He declines. I am told he has been there every day of the protest. What's his brief? Out in this febrile atmosphere, is it deranged to think that he's trying to portray Britain as a dump, to discredit our comments on human rights?

Representatives of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are handing out chunks of vegan sausage on sticks. Abi (aka StopFortnumAndMasonFoieGrasCruelty) speaks on behalf of Carmen, an amiable upright pig: 'We just want people to stop and think about how corporate greed affects the way animals are treated. They are suffering every day to make people a profit.'


Tom, a hitch-hiker planning to go to Argentina, Venezuela and Alaska, intends to change his name to Marcus: 'It's a tribute to Marcus Aurelius - I admire his philosophy. I haven't thought of a decent last name yet. We're campaigning for honest jobs. Bankers get bailed out by billions of taxpayers' money. Under Cameron, people getting made redundant can't get jobs any more.' Tom/Marcus is sitting with the Anonymous section and tells me that the tents are divided into clusters of different groups - 'A united states of activism.'

A group of women with babies is gathered at the foot of the steps. Amy is breastfeeding her daughter, five-month-old Faelyn. She says: 'I brought the baby on the tube with all the commuters and there was a nappy explosion so I had a naked baby to hold up - look! Then I was blowing bubbles down the carriage.'

She is in for the long haul: 'The world is being stripped for plastic McDonald's toys which hold attention for about a second. I'm going to support this movement constantly until there is some achievement or change in the government high up. The only other option is to watch everything slowly sink.'

She is sensitive to the dangers of giving out an 'anti' message (I think of Groucho Marx singing: 'Whatever it is, I'm against it'). She says: 'We need to say what we are for. We're trying to find a positive message that explains the negative.'

Amy beams at Faelyn: 'I wish you'd sit in your pram. No, I want cuddles all of the time, mummy.'

A genial man in a grey suit says he wants to offer his support but can't identify any protesters, so I direct him to the Anonymous group nearby. The protesters are indeed rather low key and compete for space with journalists, tourists, gawpers, exhibitionists, the normal homeless population and 15 students from Middlesex University on an animation course, sent here to do street drawing.

Constable Brockwell is cheerful despite his unflattering portrait: 'The protesters would be here anyway so it's best to work in partnership.' He has had a quiet day. 'I got someone on a mobile phone, that's been the highlight.' He's referring to a motorist who will have got a £60 fine and three points on his licence. I ask Constable Brockwell what he would do if I complained about some amplified musicians who have just struck up in front of the cathedral and he points out that they are on private land.

The cathedral is losing money from visitors and cancelled events because of the protest - the takings are said to be 70% down. 'But the money isn't real,' trills a girl making posters. 'Can I borrow your pink crayon?'


Tarek is a sous-chef from Swindon. His specialities are mashed potato and bread-and-butter pudding - the secret of the latter is half single cream, half double. 'There's a revolution going on all over the world and I want to be part of it.' Tarek has been involved in the internet planning of this protest for the last month. He is German but left his home country because he found it racist.

I am cold to the bone. As a police inspector said to one of the campers: 'You don't need a fridge.'

Claire

Several muscly men from Claire's entourage help her to move house. I deal with some light stuff. Two disco balls, peacock feathers, her grandmother's musical sewing table, white Cupid wings and a retired fan-dancer's fans, folded in their long narrow box. As Claire lifts the lid they ripple expectantly.

We carry her gear down the concrete staircase of a condemned block of flats, puddled by a leaking washing machine. Shortly after the flat door is locked behind her, someone breaks in to steal the copper piping.

Claire. Writing tender or in-your-face poetry, scanning my bookshelves for Rochester, studying prosthetic and film make-up at university (amphibious humans; guillotined French aristocrats in exquisitely authentic wigs); strong, maternal, fearless; lacing her breakfast coffee with milk, honey and brandy; whipping up her prom dress at my birthday party on a South Kensington veranda to display her tattoos.

Claire is the star of a suburban weekend life-drawing house party. We all have to cross a busy road to get to the pub. Claire sticks out her bosoms to halt the traffic in both directions and like ducklings we cross safely in her wake. 'Now I know what it felt like to follow Moses,' says Rebecca.

Claire phones her grandmother in Blackpool to reassure her after the riots in London: 'I'm in the countryside and we've been sitting in the garden.' (Claire was posing outdoors while the rest of us scurried inside to fetch stoles and cardigans for ourselves.)

A conscientious hostess, I chivy the giant homing bath-spider into a plastic jug and chuck it out of the window. 'Can they fly?' says Claire.

A marquee and an acid bath

With magisterial slowness I reverse into an empty stationary car, stopping when I hear the splintering of its number plate. This prepares me for the atmosphere of fresh litigiousness on the following day: a matchmaking fair for law students looking to give their skills to charities, held at The College of Law in Bloomsbury.

When I was a student there were trailing rain-sodden skirts, foetid Afghan coats, grants, an assumption of employment. The students in this steamy marquee are sharp-eyed: experience from volunteering will help them get a job.

I'm on the fringe of Z2K, which guides vulnerable people who fall into debt and campaigns for changes to benefits law. Maev, a Z2K trustee, is running the stand with energy and grace. When she needs sandwiches or photocopies she fails to pull rank, so I make her sit down again before I go and get them.

Maev

Maev won international distinction as a telecoms lawyer - a very serious player indeed - until the sky changed: 'After I had a brain haemorrhage in 2004, I asked how much money I really needed to live on.' She now spends her time on charities, including Trinity Hospice.

After the incident with the car I am not in the best frame of mind to start a print-making course in the evening. Naked flames, nitric acid, rollers you can scrunch finger bones in. I throw a tantrum and refuse to file metal until I am given a mask and goggles. Then I fall downstairs.

Come up and see my etching - the head of a woman scribbled in the marquee today.


By the art school acid bath I note that my eye has changed while I've been drawing under the Westway: I see Rasta colours everywhere.

Walk on by

To the people who found my blog after googling 'notting hill carnival 2011 peeing' - welcome.

Out on Portobello I find Kilimanjaro and Egbert the St Lucian Rasta. I tell them I am waiting for Jacqueline, whose husband is a trainee rabbi. 'He trainin' to rabbi,' says Kilimanjaro. Egbert and I admire this greatly but are also jealous that we didn't think of it ourselves.

Rab I. Rob. In dialect. Oh come on.

Egbert tells me his eyes are blue-grey. I should have noticed by now. He points out a man called Beddoes. Then he tells me about eddoes, starchy vegetables that he says are very scratchy on the way down. He reminisces about his mother: 'She never hit me with her left. She only hit me with the right once and she knocked me out. Then she threw cold water over me.' 

By now Jacqueline has arrived.  We're next to a record stall and we sing along with Dionne Warwick - Walk On By and This Girl's in Love with You. Egbert sits for us in a nonchalant, practised way. His rib cage is tiny, elegant. 

'Egbert draws himself,' says Jacqueline. Some life models in the studio make me tense, especially if they point their feet or arch their arms winsomely above their head, like those ballet dancers who won't make the grade, counting the bars with a dead cod face. Egbert has true grace.

Return of Operation Cup of Tea

I collect a car bootful of cake from Greggs in Portobello Road. During the looting a Greggs driver was assaulted and some of their shops were attacked, so Greggs are donating to Operation Cup of Tea, a community-bonding initiative in Duke of York Square on the Kings Road.

Kirsty, chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Volunteer Centre, is heaving around the weights which stop the market-stall gazebo from blowing over.

I see Sascha.

'Can I draw you?' I ask.
'The CIA will pay you for that image,' he says, and carries on eating a sandwich. I sit on the paving at his feet.

'I am the captain of an ocean-going two-masted Chinese-sailed pirate ship. I spend a month in France and a month here. The French call me le dernier corsaire noir d'Angleterre. The corsaires worked for the French king and queen.'

'You picked the wrong side then,' I say. He wears a huge turquoise and silver ring - 'From one of my victims. I am personally responsible for the deaths of at least a million people. I was physiotherapist to George Bush Senior on three occasions between 1989 and 1990. I was given an opportunity by the gods to change the events of the world but I didn't realise what I was there for. Had I killed him, these people would have been saved. Americans spend all their time preaching democracy and bombing people to rubble. They are the biggest mischief-makers in the world.'

Round his neck he wears an image of Buddha on a chain.
'You're a Buddhist?' I ask.
'Kind of.'

I ask why he was picked to be Bush's physio.

'I was the best in the world. I was the first to have my own concession in Holmes Place. I just got a phone call from the US Embassy. They said: "We take it you're caucasian." It's ironic. When I was 15 I was denied the chance to be a Sea Cadet in the Royal Navy because my parents were Russian emigres and it was the Cold War. Then at 47, when I was guilty of being a pirate in the highest degree, I got to be alone with the chief. They picked on a lunatic like me. There was no way of telling my mental health. I guess they thought: "He gets off on his own eccentricity, he won't blow it."

'A photographer said to me: "I suppose now you've done the chief you'll be applying for a green card." I said, "I don't like your culture and I have no intention of working in your country." He went white.'

I tell him he can get free tea and cake from the Operation Cup of Tea stall.
'What's that about?'
'It's a post-looting initiative.'

'We allow the bankers to get away with their crimes. It's a racket but they wear pin-striped suits so you don't see it. It's got to come from both ends. My friends around here were frightened for the first time in their lives. They say it's going to happen again. There's no future for young kids - how can someone get a flat? It's madness. People prefer the latest BMW to a friend. They need a major disaster to make them wake up.

'My boat is equipped to live without money. If I found a desert island I could build a shack. I've got five basic systems of cooking including burning wood. They've made us dependent on electricity. The government works through fear.'

Sascha tells how a census official approached his boat: 'He said under section 12 note 27 it says you've got to fill in this form. I grabbed a 15-foot boat hook and said under section one note one of my system it says if you don't piss off now I'm going to ram this up your backside, and he never came back.'

He is easy to draw. 'You've kind of captured me as I really am. You've caught my spirit. I'm going to laminate this and pin it on the outside of my boat as a warning.'

And he's got a Harley.

Notting Hill carnival - second day

An expensively dressed American blonde gazes at the inhospitable residential streets and whines: 'Why did they choose here?'

Because, ma'am, in 1958 there were race riots, and...

A man strokes a parked car: 'That's a fat Maserati. Wicked.'

Inspector Howe stands in the crow's nest above Westbourne Grove. A steward calls up to him: 'There are seven floats on the way. And 60 in total.'
'Six zero?'
'Yes. More than.'
'Lovely.'

Constable Basill

As I'm drawing Constable Anderson [right], a passer-by uncharitably says: 'Don't forget the horns.'

I move on to Constable Basill and a posh voice behind me says: 'She's drawing the one with the distinctive profile.' It occurs to me some hours later that he should have said 'arresting profile'.

I draw Inspector Handsome-Profile, who allows himself a bit of a wiggle to Ass in the Air. Inspector Rutland [right].

Because I spray each picture with fixative I stink like a glue-sniffer. Some youths, each one carrying a full bottle of rum, are stopped by the police.

I sit on the pavement or the kerb, scrabbling for charcoal and chalks, with people constantly passing between me and my subjects.

Constable Shiels has a helmet hanging from his belt so I guess he's in the riot police. He's very jolly.

At about 6pm, two young male tourists ask me where the party is.
'What party?'
'The big party.'
'You mean the carnival?'
'Yes, the party. We want to party.'
We shout because of the amplified music from the float going by. I point to the float.

I tell them the carnival ends in an hour. They stand drinking and sulking, womanless.

The atmosphere thickens and the police concentrate on shepherding people away. A girl with a tear-streaked face staggers after her friend, screaming. Men urinate copiously on streets and in front gardens. Lots of women would wish for that privilege. A young man shouts at a girl sitting on the pavement: 'She wanted a wee but you just wanted to dance. You think it's all about you. You said let's go there. She said please. We've done our bit. This is a collective. It's you. Let's just leave. You're being delusional.'