The Winchester

July 2011

“Are you from one of those groups?” the police officer asked me. “You know, Anarchy?”. Quite evidently, he didn’t have a clue what 8 of us were doing on a rooftop with a barbecue, but his perception of our intentions was grossly wide of the mark.

It wasn’t the most obvious of access, being on the roof of an active building, but being so close to the West End, it was worth the effort. We stood for ages on the street by a pub, waiting for everybody to go back inside before we could make our move.

It was nice and chilled up here. We weren’t overly high, and sitting on the edge of the green dome on the building adjacent, we could look right down Haymarket and enjoy our lofty position. There seemed to be a lot of police cars driving down and around, but we were confident that we wouldn’t draw their attention. As  the lights dimmed, we lit our barbecue.

At one point, a bloke from inside the building came onto the roof, took some measurements of nothing in particular, snapped a few pics on his Iphone, refused the offer of a sausage and some cider, and disappeared back down. We contempleted leaving but as we were enjoying ourselves, chose not to.

An hour later he returned with Plod, who told us that our bbq was over, innit? and told us to come downstairs. We were searched and then left. Meh.