Yesterday arrived in London at about noon and had a spot of lunch before heading for Hyde Park. We had decided not to travel burdened with packed lunches – just a half dozen bottles of water.

Knowing how nasty the buses and tubes can be on normal days we walked to Hyde Park, having decided to take the Park Lane route so we could enjoy the Gay Pride march goin gon the opposite direction.

When we reached Hyde Park Corner at 1pm the Pride march had alerady gone. That was a surprise: in previous years new people were joing the start of the march hours after the start. Maybe a lot of marchers were involved in Live 8-related events instead.

We only got a very short way up Park Lane before finding ourselves at the back end of the biggest queue I have ever seen. After 15 minutes we were in exactly the same place and then shuffled forward a few metres. I did the mental arithmetic and worked out that, at that rate, we would be lucky to catch Pink Floyd.

Somehow we moved far enough to be about level with the stage when we heard the opening bars of Sgt Pepper, but still had to get all the way up Park Lane and round the corner to the concert entrance. At this moment there was a miracle and everything started moving. Somehow we got into the park to see the end of U2’s set on the big screens.