Friday 22/7/2005

And so London slips into the weekend in a rather dazed state of mild shock. Reports reach me that tea is no longer seen as sufficiently bracing to cope with the events of this febrile summer, and citizens all over the capital are being forced to resort to Pimms. The latest news as I type this is that armed police are surrounding an Internet café on the Harrow Road, which seems a bit much even if someone was seen reading the Inq without due care and attention

There has been a curious shift in the way information flows to the curious. It used to be a common (if illegal) practice for certain naughty people to keep an ear on big events in the City by use of radio scanners tuned to the various police frequencies. Now everyone in blue is equipped with encrypted digital walkie-talkies, all you can get is dispatch riders and taxicabs moaning about roadblocks.

But tune to a local radio station, and caller after caller is reporting in with eyewitness accounts from everywhere across London. Whether this will eventually collide with the blooming bloggers, phonecam Flickristas and other unmediated digital links between the street and the screen, I cannot tell. It would certainly be possible to set up an automated phone gateway that would let anyone file a voice report on a web server, and for people to go through, identify and broadcast the most interesting and trustworthy messages. Semi-automatic talk radio, or mobile podcast aggregator?

Assuming I don't get shot, blown up, mown down by a speeding police car (by far the greatest danger to Holloway Road denizens at the moment — they are numberless as the stars at night, and as difficult to see), bowled out or hit on the head by a chunk of falling Shuttle, I shall return — clear, confident and connected, bringing clarity to your world — next week.

That's if I can resist the temptation to move to Dow Jones Newswires, which is seeking a London-based energy reporter to report and break news on Europe's power, natural gas and emissions markets." When it comes to natural gas and emissions, I bow to no man (it's far too [No, no, no. Not on my watch. - Ed ] dangerous) in my ability to break news like the very wind.