Occupy London

Kids and adults. Fathers and sons. The other day Sam amused himself in his usual way by taking the car keys, chewing them and at some mysterious moment, dropping them. The question is where ? Since they never turned up I can only guess it was down the toilet, perhaps as he reached to flush the chain - another new trick.

As the car to which the keys belonged was about to be clamped - an event I had long anticipated and planned for - I vainly scoured every inch of the flat, hoping to pre-empt the clampers. But it soon became obvious the keys would not be found and my stress level went through the roof. Not only would there now be a big fee (£140) to pay; not only would there be the prohibitively expensive cost of replacing the lost set; but I would also have to travel to another city (Oxford) just to retrieve a spare set.

Stress caused me almost to lose my rag with Sam, pressing him for a level of communication which remains in the realm of fantasy: "Keys ! ... car keys ! ... where ?!" Of course all this elicited was his familiar car sound - blowing through pursed lips.

Kids and adults. Who would want to be the latter ?

So off to Oxford I went, cycling from home in Southwark to Paddington station: a familiar route and mode of transport but this time I found myself trapped in the St. James Park-Royal Mall-Buckingham Palace triangle. The president of Turkey was being treated to a State reception, which meant a parade of Royals, including the Queen, Charles and William (I think it was him) going down the Mall in posh cars and then back again in horse-drawn carriages. Royal soldiers did their usual marching, shouting and military aerobics.

And we, the people, were literally a captive audience, unable to escape our Royal masters for the best part of an hour: long enough to fume yet again about the insanity of monarchy. God help us, when will the majority of Brits wake up to the demented idiocy that is this game of fancy-dress ? Why not just appoint a new bunch of Royals every week, based on who wins the National Lottery ?

My fuming was briefly interrupted by the sound of kids running at full tilt through the park, eager to catch another glimpse of the Queen Bee and the other gilded geese. Seeing this, I imagined how I would have behaved if my son had been with me. The sad reality is that I too would probably have entered into the childish spirit of the occasion.

But he wasn't there and so I was in Grinch-mode. The full apparatus of state was being used to grant extreme privilege to an undeserving few, at huge public expense. The VIPs (very important parasites) were ferried up and down the garden path (the illusion of this being public space was shattered) so they could work up an appetite for yet another banquet (recession, what recession ?) while expendables like me had to thank our lucky stars that we had popped into Greggs to buy an egg mayonnaise sandwich and a sticky bun en route.

We had work to go to, trains to catch and plans to keep - the little, unimportant things which allow governments and royalty to function in the first place, especially with this tottering economy.

But suddenly we realised what it means to be a "subject" of her Majesty rather than a fully-fledged citizen: we, the 99.99% are unimportant, while those 0.01% who live off our taxes and their inherited wealth are desperately, desperately important. I was witnessing the real occupiers of London and, like others massively inconvenienced with no warning or apology, we were not amused.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Car keys down the toilet.

Toy soldiers and kings and queens.

Childish things.