Got back from Tilburg in the Netherlands (where I attended the Incubate Festival for the first time... tempted to blog that but might save it all up for my forthcoming print review at the risk of repeating myself... suffice it to say it was amazing and renewed my faith in festival programmers) to find all the travellers' vehicles that use to decorate our road GONE with only parking meters and bollards in their place. How my guts sank. I knew this was going to happen, but still can't quite come to terms with the quiet carnage of it all... it's like someone's massacred half my neighbours. What a victory for the small-minded, for whom any alternative to their mode of living is an affront, even an obscenity.

I loved the travellers' vans... they were all interesting to look at, modified in various ways, but some of them, like the one in the photo above and the old chrome school bus at the end of the road, were absolutely beautiful. But this is hardly a simple matter of aesthetics. These people never seemed to bother anyone, they just lived their lives quietly and peacefully. Imagine if you'd gone away for the weekend and returned to find the entire row of houses facing yours had been demolished, the inhabitants whisked off to fuck only knows where as long as it ain't here in our lovely pristine neighbourhood. This morning a cleaning truck whisked the final traces of the travellers from the kerbside... every minute particle of dead skin sucked up and away, the erasure complete. Shudder.

So what did I do to prevent this eviction? Did I campaign? Did I write to my MP? Did I attend local residents association meetings? Did I fuck. Shameful.