Riots

Someone writing in The Times felt sorry for those students who were peacefully demonstrating against inflated fees for colleges in that they might have suffered at the hands, or rather the truncheons, of the police, because finding themselves in a surging crowd at the front of the rioters they were the most vulnerable to attack. I too feel sorry for them; I myself have found myself thrust forward in a sudden surge to find myself in the front line, as it were. This wasn't a riot but a demonstration of affection bordering on fanatiicism. Strolling in London near the Cafe Royal (?) I was aware of a lot of people also strolling aimlessly around. But they had a purpose in being there. I didn't. I was just strolling "between pubs" so to speak. Suddenly a limo arrived at the entrance to the night club and out stepped Marlene Dietrich. Having not the least interest in seeing her I nontheless was presented with a grandstand view of her; up against a police cordon with arms linked to prevent her admirers getting close to her, there I was a couple of inches away from her as she strode by ignoring all those admirers/fanatics shouting "Marlene, Marlene" in strained. agonised tones. They couldn't get close enough to her to ogle and, maybe, touch her too. I could have touched her if it wasn't for the fact that my arms were by my sides and my body was thrust against a couple of big coppers in front of me and against a crowd of fans behind me pushing hard to get to her.
One of the "rioters" in the college fees affair in London, a harmless fellow it seems who had been, like myself, pushed to the front, had been hit over the head by a truncheon; he had a large bloody gash in his skull. We see people in riots on TV and we see truncheons being used and think of them as rods of wood. They may be wood but they are the hardest of woods. As a schoolboy I had a neighbour whose father was a policeman; one day his son, my friend, showed me his father's truncheon. I held it and could not believe how solid and hard it was. I felt that you could kill someone with it. I've never forgotten the feel of it. Nor, I suppose, will that seemingly innocent student whose head was battered when he found himaself in the front of a rioting mob.