Pause

We’re in an office in Covent Garden. It’s a great space, but there’s the obligatory roadworks going on outside. Pneumatic drill accompanies the conversation, failing to drown out our voices.

At five, Sal, Matt, and I walk to Marble Arch to join the XR pause ceremony. The roads are crammed with humanity until we get to the open space of Green Park, and then become progressively emptier until we arrive.

The procession has just started. The red mimes lead the way, the crowd singing a simple melody behind them. We sit in a huge circle and are addressed by a succession of XR folk. Their sentiments are sound, but it’s too melodramatic for me.

I walk to Shaftesbury Avenue where we’re all meeting for dinner. It’s another Italian, but not as good as the one we went to a few weeks ago in Artillery Lane.

And then I have a soothing trudge back to the flat, through quiet London streets.