I went for a stroll this afternoon, to check out some art galleries in town (I’ll write that up in detail on the FAD blog sooner or later). Strolled around the edge of town, popping in and out of galleries, bought a couple of magazines and the cheapo Taschen 25 Photo Icons book from the Millennium galleries, and then strolled into the centre proper. Very strange. The G8 interior ministers were spending their second night in Sheffield, and police have been drafted in seemingly from all over the country. Everywhere they were standing in twos, threes, fours, fives, on every corner, in front of almost every shop. There was a very strange atmosphere, not particularly unfriendly or anything, just full of… expectation. In every shop, shopkeepers were standing by the door, as if waiting to shut it and bolt it just in case a herd of protestors came rioting by.

I tried to find somewhere to go for a cup of tea and a piece of cake, but the police seemed to have strategically cordoned off all of the coffee shops. So I walked out of town along West Street, to the café with the sexy waitresses and the home-made cakes. Bliss.

The sense of unreality followed me all the way home. I have no idea how much of it was down the the G8, how much to my own slightly heightened awareness, and how much to the sudden arrival of summer: I felt similarly wierd this morning, going to park and realising that, in the couple of days since I last visited, the grass seems to have grown from somewhere around my ankles to somewhere near my neck, and the previously purple-brown-maroon lake in Crookey Valley Park is now the colour of pea soup.

On the bus I passed men stripped to the waist, somebody in a cowboy hat, shades and a leather waistcoat. Just after I got off I walked past a couple outside the care home at the corner of the road, both were wearing nurses uniforms in different shades of blue, and both looked ecstatic to be walking hand in hand. It was one of those days when I wished I’d had my camera. But didn’t.