When a major event takes place in London, along comes the paraphernalia of ceremony to control and to broadcast.
Up go the crowd control barriers to line the streets and hold the adoring crowds at a respectful distance, and the loathing crowds at an even greater distance.
Camera crews unable to borrow overlooking office spaces to lean out of need their platforms along the route.
TV personalities need a posh box to sit in and commentate on the proceedings.
And a cluster of technology laden vans are hidden around corners to transmit digital bits and bytes to those participating vicariously from a distance.
The police will be out in force to keep an eye on proceedings, and behind its stony façade, the Royal Courts of Justice will continue dolling out the law – just use the side entrance on Wednesday.
I work on the route, in a fairly prominent bulding near to Parliament Sq. Will probably be WAH-ing on Wednesday.
Where the hell do they keep those crash barriers, there’s thousands of them – and they’re not exactly neat stackers – they’re fairly bulky?
Where I am from (Ottawa, Canada) which has a similar occasional need for thousands of crowd control gates, I found the storage location the other day – Along the edge of a highway yard they wait neatly stacked on a small fleet of trailers, ready to be hooked up at a moment’s notice and hauled out to hold back the masses.