150, 000 people, supposedly a random cross-section, gives ample opportunity for people-watching.
I only saw one person I know - Karl, who I used to work with, we had a chat on Park Lane.
The crowd was extraordinarily homogenous. I would say it was fairly classless - I encountered posh people and the chavviest of chavs, and everything in between. But otherwise...
The overwhelming majority that we encountered was aged twenty-five to fifty, a really narrow age range. Apart from Paul McCartney (and how old are The Who and Pink Floyd?) I don't think there was anybody there older than Jimmy. There were a small number of children, but very few 15-25 year olds, unless they had camped out overnight and got down the front.
The crowd was unbelievably white. Although fairly international, it was European, North American, and a fair spattering of South Africans and New Zealanders (and we know Jimmy's Australian nephew was there). I saw maybe five or six African or Afro-Caribbean people, one group of six Asian blokes. One or two people ethnically Chinese. Otherwise, white white white.
I was shocked to see how many grossly fat people there were, and many of them in their Twenties or Thirties. I remarked on this to Jimmy "It make sme feel positively slim in comparison." A woman passing by started chucking, looked me up and down, and nodded knowingly in a friendly way. And what is so scary how is badly those fat people dress. Perhaps they don't care, but that is contradicted by their slavish adherence to the latest fashions.
This is me, not exactly, Slimmer of the Year, but I figure that if you start off with clothes that fit, it matters little.
I thought I had seen some fat people before, but I just kept being confronted with relatively young people who were actually struggling to walk because of their morbid obesity. Thank god there were none near me when Robbie ordered us to bounce. I have to say, I thought this obesity panic was some propaganda by killjoy Health officials, but the evidence of yesterday suggests that it is well-founded. I wonder why I don't normally see such a high proportion of lard-arses. Perhaps because they can only waddle from their TV sofa to their car and back again. It's going to be a lasting impression. And, of course, just about every lard-arse I saw had fried chicken or burger and chips or a plethora of sugar-filled fizzy drinks.
My picnic lunch was fairly fatty but I would say marinated prawns, cheese and courgette fritters (a mistake, we meant to get Falafel) and roasted peppers and feta, and water, was at least healthy. And very very tasty. Jimmy had roast chicken rather than prawns. Oh, and we got a Carte D'Or ice cream each.
Leaving the concert was a great experience. There was no traffic - Central London was closed to traffic and it made it unbelieveably pleasant. Throngs of people walking, or hobbling, purposefully down Grosvenor Place. No hassle, no harrassment, being able to breathe in the air. We got to Victoria, and they said the next train to Brixton was 12 minutes. I groaned inwardly, and was fearful of how many people would arrive in the interim. Then they said it was Terminating at Victoria. I ranted and raged - not at the LU staff, just randomly, trying to work out which clueless sadistic control-freak had made that decision. After the rant, the news came through that it was going to Brixton, at which applause rang out from the assembled crowd. It was a good thing, because otherwise I would have fired off an email today to Ken, pointing out that, seeing as though Southbound buses were starting at Vauxhall, it would have been tantamount to criminal neglect to capriciously not run Tubes to Vauxhall.
But even at half twelve, when people were beginning to get a little anxious about how to get home, I saw no evidence of trouble. I expect that there were arrests, but it would be interesting to know how few.
