New recruits on the pavement

Amelia and Skye

Skirting the archipelago of fag ends and pigeon droppings outside the Royal Courts of Justice, I snap into my default position: sitting on the pavement to draw.

Amelia and Skye are at the launch of Occupy Faith, a summer pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury (think Chaucer, think Aldermaston) organised by Skye's mother Tanya. There are speeches, prayers, chanting.

The girls draw without inhibition. 'Why is everybody watching us doing it?' asks Amelia.

It's cold. A man crosses the road. He's wearing nothing but floral Bermuda shorts, a red baseball cap, sandals and his natural ginger pelt over his bare yellowish skin.  'Uurgh,' say the girls.

We retreat to the crypt cafe at St Paul's cathedral with Tina, Amelia's grandmother. Tina is energetic, undefined by national boundaries, direct, passionate.  If Starbucks' lav is shut she'll unlock it with a coin.

Amelia and Tina

The Occupy protest camp outside St Paul's had a scruffy romance. Bertie Wooster had the Drones Club, Jeeves had the Junior Ganymede, and lovers of tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited were welcome at the Information Tent. To the evicted occupiers it is Camelot, more real in their imaginations than the destination of Occupy Faith.