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Published: January 12th 2010
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2 remarkable things happened to me last Sunday.
One, my camel arrived and two, I met Brian Haw.
On the 3rd January at exactly 1.45pm, at the exact moment of stepping onto Vauxhall Bridge and looking over to my left at the clouds rolling over Battersea Power Station, whilst hearing seagulls and smelling a tidal river that smells like the sea; my camel arrived along with the rumbling of the volume of traffic.
I wasn’t ready for it.
I didn’t know what it would feel like. I couldn’t breathe properly.
It arrived with an overwhelming sense of being in the right place at the right time, the exact moment weighed down by time and history of my own travels, my family, generations of my family standing on unknown bridges and looking at their own views patched into mine, moving house, town, city, country, continet, loss, gain, change, old and new all merged into this one moment. It lasted about a full minute whereupon I had to hold onto the bridge hand rail and could do nothing but let it flood over me, through me.
Two months and fifteen days since arriving back from China and my
camel came to meet me on a bridge. It passed in its own time and I didn’t dismiss it away and the bitter wind didn’t shift it at any great speed and as I walked away, I didn’t look over my shoulder to watch it disappear into the old stones of the bridge - I just kept walking.
Crossing the bridge over the river I looked to my right and saw a magnificent view all the way down the Thames to the Eye. As I stepped off Vauxhall bridge, down the old steps to the Millbank river side where the road has bare winter tree’s with arms reaching over the wall down towards the river and within a further minute is Tate Britain holding Britania aloft in the clouds. This is all 7 minutes from my new home.
In the park by the Thames next to The Houses of Parliament is the Buxton monument erected in honour of someone who helped abolish slavery. It was once in Parliament square but moved in 1957 to this place. A puppy runs circles around it, the place is dotted with tourists and I’m faced with Rodin’s Burghers of Calais pointing towards
the road.
The sovereign’s entrance to the Houses of Parliament is both magnificent and questionable but there is one thing for sure, it stops me in my tracks to look at the hugeness and beauty of it all steeped in a history that I have no idea of.
Opposite the Houses of Parliament is Parliament Square which also faces Big Ben. On the grass of the square which is in fact a road island, and on the pavement opposite Big Ben is an arrangement of tents, flags and placards. Leaning on crutches, in front of these tents is a lonesome man in many layers of clothes with a hat on covered in badges. I stand directly in front of him out of curiosity, not confrontation. I look at him, at his hands, at his tents and at the banners. There is another seemingly crazy man chanting and circumnavigating the area doing nothing for anyone, least of all himself and the silent man with the crutches that I am facing.
“You live here?” I ask.
He nods but doesn’t speak.
“How long have you lived here?”
He just points towards his banners and I figure
out from random dates what I think it could be.
“8 years!? You have lived here on the pavement for 8 years?”
He looks directly at me for the first time and he has the calmest blue eyes I have ever seen. And then he nods again.
I look at his poster of a baby with what looks like tomato eyes and mouth. He says, “this is what our government is doing to other people’s babies”
His one line is a bit vague for me as well as the information and banners which cover war, iraq, bombing and this baby and although I listen to him and I read the words, I cannot hear him properly because I am actually in awe of him and that he can live on the pavement opposite the Houses of Parliament for 8 years fighting for something that none of us think about enough.
“how do you live?” I ask and I know that there is no other way for him to live now.
I want to ask him a million questions, instead, so as not to pester him, I say “I will look you up when I
get home” and I have done so. His name is Brian Haw and as I write this, he is living on the pavement in ice and a scattering of snow. He is 61 years old and from what I can see, has aged dramatically during his eight years living on a traffic island fighting for a cause. He only leaves Parliament Square to go to court. The pictures that you can find of him taken from when he first started campaigning, show a vigorous strong man but now he seems tired but he is standing up and being counted every day.
I have never seen anyone with such dedication to a cause before, be it either their own or someone else’s or the world’s but here is a man who peaceably lives for something bigger than himself and you can sense a world in his eyes.
Look him up - Brian Haw
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