As I walked from river to coffee shop, the hovering helicopter and the photographers hanging round on street corners provided a clue.
It's always a guessing game. Last week, it was fascinating to watch the convoy delivering the German minister to our building for an Emergency EU meeting. "What cars were they were in - Mercs or BMWs?" asked a colleague. "Black." I said. I'm a girl.
Just a few weeks ago Tony Blair was convoyed along the road just past the postbox where moments earlier I had deposited two items of post. Sometimes it's royalty or heads of state from home or abroad. Not quite as exciting as when we were almost adjacent to the Palace.
I emerged from coffee shop and walked my normal backstreet route to the office. Often, one has to pause a moment or two for the prison vans to manouvre into place before depositing the culprits. This morning was different. A second helicopter was hovering overhead. Police vans and cars were almost outnumbered by TV satellite vans. Serious photographers with macho fuck-off equipment. And the public, poised with mobile phones, desperate for the moment of audience-generated-content fame for the photo they capture with Nokia 1234 that a pro can't capture with three grands of serious Canon and Fuji equipment.
Sirens began to scream, the sound of cars being driven at speed. I panicked, I have roads to cross, I need to get to work. I began to tremble, scared. In my hands I have a grande latte semi-skinned extra shot, a fag, and an mp3 player (hence no photos taken for purposes of blog). I did not want to be swept up in a media scrum. Cones were placed as roadblocks. A London Buses van acted suspiciously, clearly commandeered for covert surveillance. Three traffic wardens wandered the streets seemingly uninterested in issuing parking tickets. "Something massive is happening at the Magistrates Court,". I had a guess. For a moment or two I felt myself caught up in a global news story.
Is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke the same person who used to be head of Brixton Police and still owes me a response to a Members' Enquiry from over a decade ago.
