Loping Against the Pope Recap, on Dispatch from the Razor's Edge

So, as mentioned – particularly in the comments of the last dispatch – I think we've probably got bigger problems than perverted priests, and I feel a little bit bad piling on the Catholic Church, particularly since I know and love some really lovely devout Catholics.

But damned if I didn't go anyway (more in the spirit of Here's This Cool Event Where I Live and I'd Really Rather Not Be Personally Paying For A State Visit From This Guy rather than God Save Us From The Evil Of Holy Men), and I had a cracking time. Here's a brief rundown.

I developed a strategy which involved gearing up and running through the park to Hyde Park Corner in time for the start of the march. I was a bit late, and ended up chasing them down Piccadilly – chasing perhaps as many as 20,000 people, as it turned out. This was rather more than the few I hundred I was kind of expecting.

I totally randomly also had the wonderful experience – probably number one on the list of reasons one lives in a place like London – of randomly encountering, and being adopted by, a really amazing little group of people. (Including an entirely charming and erudite clinical psychoanalyst married to an actor-turned-novelist, and a documentary filmmaker dressed as a naughty Pope.)

I neglected to bring a camera but here's a photo set by someone else that stresses a bit the freaks that came out, but generally seems to capture it. (Mouseover for player controls and thumbnails.)

Hey! I just noticed I'm in one of the ones above! That's my left ear, above the 'Religion is Silly' sticker on my FDNY muscle shirt. Beside me is the naughty pope/documentary filmmaker.

Finally ended up in Whitehall across from Downing Street – with, actually, the Cenotaph right between us and the speaker. However, I dashed forward when I heard Dawkins go on, and managed to see (and, more or less, hear) him while up on tip-toe.

I ran home.

Oh! – today was also my seven-year anniversary in London. Well spent.

london photography religion video

Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.

Fuchs is the author of the novels The Manuscript and Pandora's Sisters, both published worldwide by Macmillan in hardback, paperback and all e-book formats (and in translation); the D-Boys series of high-tech, high-concept, spec-ops military adventure novels – D-Boys, Counter-Assault, and Close Quarters Battle (coming in 2016); and is co-author, with Glynn James, of the bestselling Arisen series of special-operations military ZA novels. The second nicest thing anyone has ever said about his work was: "Fuchs seems to operate on the narrative principle of 'when in doubt put in a firefight'." (Kirkus Reviews, more here.)

Fuchs was born in New York; schooled in Virginia (UVa); and later emigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he lived through the dot-com boom. Subsequently he decamped for an extended period of tramping before finally rocking up in London, where he now makes his home. He does a lot of travel blogging, most recently of some very long walks around the British Isles. He's been writing and developing for the web since 1994 and shows no particularly hopeful signs of stopping.

You can reach him on .

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Dispatch from the Razor's Edge is owned and operated by novelist, technologist, vegan, exercise junkie, classical liberal, rambler, and Londoner Michael Stephen Fuchs.


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