Horizon

Dreams galore once more, with predictable subject matter, featuring a certain person who lives not a million miles away. I got up just after eight-thirty and Dad gave me a lift into Easterby. I bought four papers for their Shuttle coverage, which was predictably repetitive, and then trekked over to the Library to take back my books. I took out five books: Revolutionary Silhouettes by Lunacharsky; Theories of Revolution: An Introduction by Cohan; Year One of the Russian Revolution by Victor Serge; Miller’s A View From the Bridge (because of its critical notes) and finally, a book for Dad on Lord Raglan and the Crimean War.  After lamenting my moneyless circumstances in HMV, I read Cohan’s book for a while when I got back.

I waited eagerly for teatime and Shuttle news, and sure enough, there was a view of the blue, cloud-speckled earth through the Shuttle windows. More film on the late evening news, Young with spec’s on reading checklists, talking with Bush, and both men doing the obligatory acrobatics. The interior of “Columbia” looked like a cross between Skylab and an airliner cockpit. I watched Horizon (about Saturn) and the Argentinian Grand Prix and came to bed.

I read and heard news about Brixton and the riots throughout the day; on reflection, my thoughts are pretty unfair and narrow-minded regarding the "over-reaction" of people who live with high unemployment in a rundown area, suffering constant police activity, and with little hope in sight. What gets me really though is reading shitty comments from Eldon Griffiths blaming the violence on “Marxist agitators” who follow Lenin’s maxim of smashing the police “to bits." This is a very un-Leninist phrase to me.