A Soldier Playing a Guitar

Shelly was working at the National Portrait Gallery today, so me and M went to check out the Constable portraits exhibition, which I liked a lot. Most of the pictures in the exhibition are of people Constable knew well, so it's a bit like a Georgian photo album. The soldier in this drawing, from 1806, is thought to be Constable's cousin, James Gubbins, who was killed nine years later at Waterloo.

White Riot

Yesterday I had to cycle through the city twice on minor capitalist errands. In the morning this gave me the chance to join a very subdued Stop the City cavalcade of bikes. I suspect that 10am is a tad too early for proper rioters - especially those who have to commute in from the suburbs. The afternoon was a quite different picture. I only hovered around the edges, where the police were very restrained and looked quite bored with the minor skirmishes they had to deal with, but you could feel the tension building up from inside the 'kettling' zone. I was interested to read that city workers were leaning out of their windows attempting to goad protestors by waving £10 notes. £10 notes? Hardly Loadsamoney is it?