Not sure how well this is going to work, keeping a diary on bog roll, but c’est la vie. The fat controller puffed out his cheeks, lowered his eyebrows and wagged his finger when I asked for paper and his lackey rushed to copy him. I’m not going to ask them for anything else except access to our lawyer and our consuls, which I ask for every hour but they’re still refusing.

They keep bringing us food but Huwaida and I are on hunger strike. It’s in protest at being deported from Palestine by Israel and for doing humanitarian aid work and upholding international law, and also as a gesture of solidarity with the Palestinians being starved in the church and those around it being confined to their homes by the curfew. As well we’re aiming to be too weak to be put on the plane when they try to deport us, so we’re refusing water as well.

I don’t know whether anyone else is doing it too – a few of us said we would – Kate and Marcia were going to and Johannes said the two Nathans and Trevor were going to and maybe someone else. Two women guards yesterday kept coming in and demanding to know "Where is KeThomas?" and it gave me enormous pleasure to tell them I didn’t know.

I don’t know and nor do you because your guards didn’t do their job very well as we were taken out of the Ministry of the Interior. I was being guarded because I’d already escaped from the Peace Centre – I climbed out of the window of the office I was locked in, finding myself on a balcony, so I swung myself up onto the roof and sat there singing "If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands." They weren’t, apparently, and they didn’t.

Anyway, as we walked up to the prison van I saw Kate and Marcia stroll casually around the corner. It slowly dawned on the bloke who had my arm that they weren’t supposed to have walked around the corner and when he reached the corner they’d vanished, just melted away – it was wicked, so I pulled my arm free and ran down the road, nowhere to go but they all chased after me instead of searching for the others and the one closest shouted to a bloke in a doorway and he tried to stop me but I whirlwinded through and got quite a way before they grabbed me and four or five of them pushed me back to the van and I kept smiling at all the people staring at me and they didn’t find Kate and Marcia in the hour or more that they held us in the van before driving us to the airport.

Jeff and John were taken for their flights at some point yesterday – John’s was at midnight at Jeff’s was 5am – he was going then anyway to start a forest fire fighting course in the US. He was lovely. He gave me a hug when I most needed one. He was staying in the same hostel we were in and he came in on the evening we arrived and asked did we want to go on a demo in Bethlehem.

To be fair, we were going to the meeting about it in the morning anyway. I got a bit tearful in the prison van when he was talking about the stuff he’d seen and done and the people he’d met and I just felt like I’d completely fucked up because Kate and Marcia were on the run and Al was in the church and I was just going to be jailed and deported after less than 24 hours in Palestine without any stories to tell. I suppose I’d forgotten what a story the action was in itself, walking unarmed through a siege by one of the best equipped armies in the world, never mind the fact we were being jailed for taking food to starving people.

Either way it doesn’t matter now because there’s definitely no way out of this cell without big guns or power tools or a magic flying horse but I feel a lot stronger about it today after a bit of sleep and especially now with a pen and some bog roll and bizarrely I feel like the hunger strike is keeping me strong, which is a bit ironic, gaining strength from a mission to become as weak as we can in the hope they won’t be able to put us on a plane by the time they come for us.

I’m still having occasional hunger pains and thirst headaches but I barely ate after breakfast on the day of the action because I was scared and then because I was in custody and then it was too late and everything was shut and by morning I felt too minging to eat. I had 3 bites of a sesame bar, 5 cashew nuts and a 2 inch bit of bread. I drank my last water in the van about 4pm yesterday. It hasn’t been the food thing that’s seemed hardest so much as the vast empty minutes ahead, without books, paper, anything, but I’m not on my own – Huwaida’s here, and she’s still got her phone, although we have to keep it hidden, and there’s also a Russian woman called Mabell Vera, but we can’t communicate much with her.

I was able to see the lads opposite through the cell windows and that was really comforting, especially as the guards kept doing the cheek puffing and finger wagging thing and telling me I couldn’t look out of the window. I think I can, as it goes. It’s coming to something when looking out of your cell window is an act of rebellion – and one more notable than starving yourself.

When we left the van Jeff hugged me and said "Be strong." I said I’d be strong, but after not too many minutes in here it had all seeped away. It’s isolating and you can’t tell the effects of what you’re doing or whether everyone else is doing and feeling the same as you and you want holding and cuddling or even just smiles through the 6 inch square windows over the heads of the disapproving guards and I knew those were going to be taken away in a few hours and I started out of tears trying to build up a stock of reasons to be strong and in the end there were lots, because it doesn’t matter really what the effects are, the same as everything else – you have to do the thing full-on for its own sake and what happens beyond that is out of your control – whether someone else runs faster, whether it takes a week to evict you or a month, whether the press writes good stuff, complete shite or nothing at all, how other people respond to what you did, etc, etc.

People get held in deportation centres to be sent back to torture and death. It’s far worse for Huwaida and the Nathans because they have lives here that they’re potentially barred from for the next ten years. We may have helped prevent a bloodbath at the church and we’ve made a massive difference to the people in and around the church and Bethlehem and the Israeli army is really pissed off and Ariel Wanker Sharon is reportedly furious and that makes me happy.

Soldiers kept saying to us, "We were really close to a final solution and now you’ve ruined everything." They were trying to tell us we’d hampered the settlement but they’d been firing indiscriminately at the church over the last few days since the last lot of people left. Someone was shot by a sniper when he went into the courtyard to pick the green stuff that grows there. They claim they’re giving food to the people in there but the people inside, Palestinians and internationals, say it’s not true.

It’s quite chilling though, of all people, to hear Jewish people talking about a final solution. It makes me feel like there’ll never be an end. One of the boy-soldiers in the Peace Centre was saying the Palestinians were bad, violent people. I said you couldn’t say something like that about a whole nation of people and he said, well, most of them. I said to him that over the years people have said that about all the Jews and acted on those prejudices and look how terrible the results were but whenever you get anywhere close to the bone with them they’d stop talking to you or their mates would tell them to stop or a senior officer would send them away and get another one to guard you.

And just from me deciding to come here there ended up being four of us and now there’s a British person in the Church, so beyond what I do, I kind of started that.

But then in the end, for all my stock of reasons to be strong, the best one was that there’s no reason not to be. I guess in the face of something unknown or scary it’s the easiest one to forget, but there’s no reason to be weak. There’s no reason to be scared. When it’s tough I just need to look at myself from outside my body and see myself as the woman I’d most aspire to be and ask her what she’d do and then do it, or really in here it’s more a matter of being it, because there’s not much room for doing.

We’ve all had a spell of walking up and down the cell – a deeply unfulfilling activity given the dimensions. It’s white, with a grey floor and ceiling, lit by a fluorescent strip light with another one that doesn’t work. There are two sets of bunk beds and an alcove at the end with shelves and the door. There’s loads of food on the shelves which strangely has no power over me. There are 3 windows – a small one in the door and a small one at the end of my bed and a bigger one next to my bed which opens but has metal bars which are way too close together for me to wriggle through. It looks out onto a baggage handling area and from time to time a trailer comes thundering and clattering through and they throw all the cases onto a carousel and it starts to feel like sleep deprivation torture after a while but then it doesn’t happen for hours.

It’s lit up but there’s no daylight and no way of telling if it’s light or dark beyond the tunnel. There’s an airshaft as well but no daylight or escape route there either. It was quite cold last night because the window into their bit was open but they shut it - which was what I wanted them to do - when they took Jeff and John out and I spoke to them. I did some stretching yesterday and practised my kung fu forms – those that there’s room for in here – and went through the Theft Act in my head – sections, definitions, actus reus and mens rea. Not quite how I expected to do my revision, but not to worry. I think one of the things that’s hard for me in here is not knowing my rights or the law. Normally if I ask for something and it’s refused I know if I’m entitled to it or not and here I don’t.

It’d be great to see the others. Marcia and Kate handed themselves in in the end and Georgie thought they were being brought here. If we’re all in custody I wish we could be together. I’d really like to see everyone again before we get deported, especially the ones that were in our group for the action. It’s the fear thing partly – when you’re really scared or really joyful, the people you share that intensity of feeling with take on an extra magic and we were all together preparing and going up to the Square – the three of us, Trevor and the Nathans - and then afterwards on the way out, giving Trevor a quick hug and then all linking arms and holding on to each other as they bundled us into the corner and then all of us being in the Peace Centre and then when I was held in the corridor, tall Nathan was next door one way and Trevor the other way, in the room with the smashed door that I escaped from onto the roof so we could see each other and wind the soldiers up by talking to each other and even just by making eye contact and pulling faces.

Also the three of them saved us being in a group with Annoying Tony, the American who thought he was some great strategist and thought it should be all Americans who went into the church because their government was the most powerful (and probably the least likely to give a shit) and nobody cared about anyone except Americans. I could see Marcia getting closer and closer to wanting to kill him and then he said he was going to join our group, but just in time we saw the three of them and went, no, we’re with them, and he went to find someone else to irritate.

We argued that there should be as many different nationalities as possible in a team of 5 men – they only wanted men because there are 160 or so blokes in there and they’ve been in there a month, so they didn’t want any awkward situations, nor too many mouths to feed when there’s so little to go round. That was a reason why Al was chosen, but more than five people went in – not sure how many – and at least two women, one a journalist, which was pretty shit of the ones who went in knowing they weren’t meant to and knowing the reasons why, because the amount of food we could carry wasn’t going to go far, but it doesn’t matter now.

I admit I wished I was in there after we all got detained, and I’d been right at the door passing bags of food into invisible hands in the dark, but it would’ve been disrespectful and it would’ve only been my ego really that made me do it, so maybe envy has a bit to do with it but I know I did the right thing.

Vera mostly looks out of the window in the door at the TV or walks up and down the cell and asks to go to the toilet a lot. I only go for bog roll as there’s nothing left in me to expel. Huwaida blows bubble gum and has phoned loads of people and told as many journalists as possible, so we’re a lot less isolated than we might be. I left a message on Ian’s answerphone, so he’ll put it out on indymedia, and I told Roger at Kebele but I wish I could speak to Jenny. I guess if Georgie sends out an e mail to the Palestine Solidarity list it’ll get to her – not sure if she’ll know it’s me. I know I wouldn’t even know she knew but if I thought she knew, I’d know she was thinking about me and that’d be good.

I feel like Jenny’s much braver than me, but then maybe that’s belittling what she goes through in jail, because every person that hears the jail door slam in front of them and finds themselves confined to a small box must feel the same sense of isolation, the same uncertainty about their ability to cope with it and not lose their mind. I remember reading something by Vaclav Havel about being in jail and how your cell becomes your own and then whenever he was moved he felt a sense of loss because even that bare room became lined with something of him and became his own place.

People have said as well that their dreams have stopped being outside the jail and started being set behind bars as well. I keep thinking of the story I wrote about the Buddhist monastery that was also an orphanage and a prison and had different meanings for the different people who lived there – a place of punishment, a place of reward or simply the whole world and all they’d ever known, and especially about the rocking horse, which all the kids loved, but I had a magical horse with wings and years later, I was in jail for being a freedom fighter and locked up by people who had keys and cars to drive away in, but I was still less imprisoned than they were, in their uniforms, because I had a magical horse with wings. I’m finding my magic horse with wings.



It’s a bit later now. There’s another woman just been brought in, well a while ago now. She’s got an Australian and a Canadian passport and has been refused entry. She was coming to visit a bloke she met on the internet. He sent her half the money to come over here, but they held her at immigration and he said he didn’t know her, or he’d never met her or something, so she’s getting deported at 9am back to Jordan, where she came through.

She was quite stressed when she got here but I bought her some fags because she had no Israeli money (which unfortunately she’s been chain smoking ever since, but there you go) and she had some wine with her that she brought to share with Sammy, the internet man, and Huwaida let her use the phone to speak to him, so she’s calmer and I chatted to her for ages about what we’d been doing and she said she was really inspired and wants to get involved and be a peace activist. She reckons god put her in here to meet us. Now she’s adding to the graffiti on the wall. I did a bit earlier, saying what we were doing and why we were here.

Oh god, she’s getting water. They just brought more food and had to put it on the bed because there’s no more room on the shelf, and although I’m hungry I still don’t feel all that tempted by the food, because my stubbornness far outweighs my hunger, especially now I’ve gone this long, but water looks beautiful, clear and pure, but when the guard held it out to me, it gave me strength to say no.

In Jenin they turned away the aid sent by the US because the Apache helicopters given to Israel were all the aid the Palestinians needed from the US. I know it’s a hugely different situation but fuck them, they’re holding us in a cell and kicking us out of a country they’re illegally occupying with the world’s complicity, and they’re kicking us out for taking food to besieged people. We keep telling them to take the food to the people in the church and the people confined to their houses by the curfew instead of bringing it to us. If I can be too weak to walk to the plane then so much the better, but then anyway maybe I’ll refuse to walk, so they’ll have to carry me.

They know now that we’re refusing food and water and it’s been in the press about the action so it’s maybe getting out – it’s hard to know and it’s true that we could say we were on hunger strike and actually still be eating but I couldn’t do it – I’d feel like a fraud and in the face of so much oppression and so many lies the Israeli authorities and the soldiers and the politicians tell, the principles, the ethics, are all we have. It’s a bit like refusing everything they offer us takes away some of their power over us.

She’s gone to sleep now, the new woman. I don’t think she said her name. I told her mine when she came in and she just stared in shock with golf ball eyes and a goldfish mouth and then started firing out questions – how long had we been here, what was happening, what had they done to us?

The cell opposite is empty now and I’m coping fine without the smiling faces. I should never go anywhere without a biro – it makes such an inordinate difference to my life and state of mind. We might’ve helped save over a hundred lives in that church, people who are in there for refuge or for trying to defend their hometown from invasion. Apparently the armed ones are from the Palestinian police and are legally armed.

Huwaida just spoke to her mum and she’s begging her to start eating again and she said it’s not getting much attention and she’s waiting for another lawyer to call her and tell her whether there’s a chance of fighting the deportations and if not then she might drop the hunger strike. I think she’s feeling more grim than me – she gets really dizzy when she stands up. I’m feeling at the moment that I’ll stick with it. It’s kind of its own thing now – an end in itself as well as the symbolic thing and the becoming weak, because it’s the only way to resist in here, and as well if Kate and Marcia and the lads are hunger striking as well then I don’t want to break solidarity with them, even if they don’t know and even though I don’t know if they’re doing it.

It won’t do me any long term harm in so short a time so there’s nothing to lose. In fact, if it came to it, more than I want food, I want to dance. I want to be in a mosh pit of my mates, jumping about like a nutter. More than I want water, I want to hug everyone that was on the action – although maybe I’d have a quick rinse because my mouth tastes like a badger’s bum and probably no one would want to get that near me till I washed out the worst of the fumes. I don’t suppose I’ll ever see most of them again but they’ll always be part of the memory of an amazing day.

Fuckinhell, what a day. We believed in ourselves enough to try it, caught the Israeli army off guard, held it together, crossed the square past tanks and guns and anything we thought they might throw or fire at us, just kept walking, believing we could do it, and broke a month long siege fuelled by nothing but the knowledge that it was the right thing to do. I can’t believe we did it. I think I wouldn’t have if Kate and Marcia and Al hadn’t been with me – when we first heard the plan my reaction was "I’m not doing it." They went "Really?" and I thought maybe if they thought I could do it, then I could.

Being in jail feels quite a lot like being in the tunnel in some ways, in that no world is conceivable beyond these walls, even though the world beyond is precisely the reason why I’m in here, and the moment becomes everything – there’s no real focus on anything else. I can contemplate whether I’ll walk to the plane, eat on the plane, I can concentrate on the theft acts or an imaginary trapeze performance, but the here and now is all that matters. But at the same time it’s the thing that matters least, because I don’t feel constrained by it. I know it’ll end and fade and all the physical discomfort will be gone and I can choose what to keep from it all.

Although I can’t get out, in a lot of ways I’ve chosen to be here and it’s not oppressing me. I had the freedom to choose and being here makes me realise what a massive freedom that is. The Palestinians don’t have those choices. If I didn’t get to do all I expected to do, I did get to do something I never expected to, the action of a lifetime really, such a non-violent challenge to violence. It’s OK really. I’m surprised how fine I feel. I’ve been more than 24 hours without water now.

I wish I knew where Kate and Marcia are. I wonder if Kate’s fallen in love with anyone. There are five of us in here now – they just brought in a Palestinian woman who lives in Chicago and has been refused entry with her husband to come and visit her mother and sister. Her husband’s in the cell opposite. Huwaida’s been told that the Bethlehem thing might be resolved within hours. She says if we’re physically unfit to fly it’s against regulations for them to fly with us. I’m sure by then we will be.

It’s 8 o’clock now. It’ll be dark outside again. I’ve barely moved off my bunk all day so I suppose I should get down and move about a bit, especially as my bed and blankets have been squatted.

I want some water now. I feel quite weak. The guard just offered us tea and coffee when I told him we weren’t eating or drinking. There’s water in the corner and it’s tempting, really tempting, just to take a mouthful but there’s a big invisible wall between me and it. It’s a bit like a siren call, I want it but I’d hate myself for giving in to it all. I begin to see how anorexics can do it – refusal does make you strong, although outside a prison cell there are obviously much better things to resist. Resistance is everything and when there are few ways left to resist, your own body and refusal can be the only tool, the only weapon.

The bloke just told me there’s no point because it’s immigration that decides, not them. We told him it didn’t matter; we shouldn’t be here for taking food to starving people. I wrote on the wall, "This too will pass", which I remember Grant telling me was graffittied on the wall of a prison van he once spent a long time in. I meant this time in the cell, but also this situation, this occupation. Every empire crumbles, even the semi-invisible US one. One day there’ll be no borders to confine and separate and banish people.

I have to avoid focussing my mind on the end though, because the aim of this is to stop them deporting me and the only way of doing that is by being physically incapacitated, but that means I have to gather my courage for another day and another till they either drop the deportation or fly me home in an air ambulance. I feel hollow – there’s no muscle and bone in my neck to hold my head up.

Huwaida’s just on the phone to someone and asked if they had any news from Marcia and Kate or the men and if any of them are on hunger strike and then she said, "Trevor is?" and my will just reinforced itself a bit. If he can do it, so can I, even if Huwaida does decide to stop. It doesn’t matter that he’s somewhere else, the solidarity is still there, just knowing someone else is doing it too is enough.

I find the peaks and troughs of will quite fascinating, the way the water in the corner swings from a siren to a poison and, I’ve no doubt, back again. Just as I was feeling the most desperate yet for water, I heard that someone else was hunger striking too and immediately felt I’d rather glue my lips together than drink.

It’s also similar to the tunnel in that we had then, and have now, not a clue what effect our struggle might have – they might still deport me on Monday as they plan and no one in Palestine or beyond might ever know what we’re doing but you have to keep up the struggle, in blind faith and stubbornness.

I’m starting to realise how entrenched the prejudice is, the idea among Israelis that Palestinian = violent, bad, etc. It seems there are a tiny few who fight for human rights on both sides but almost without exception among the soldiers – ie. all non-orthodox Israelis between 18 and 20 or 21 – as well as guards, ministry staff and so on, the attitude is that the Palestinian people are violent.

Sadly I didn’t get to meet enough Palestinians to know whether the same goes in return but a lot of the internationals I’ve met have got really frustrated with the Israeli attitude. I don’t see how there can be a national characteristic though, on either side – all Palestinians or all Israelis. I know people have a tendency to conform and behave like the people around them because that’s the social norm, but surely that’s different.

I’m quite hungry just now, but it’ll go, like all the other times. I got the guard to bring a mattress from the other cell as there’s only one person in there, so I’ve got one to myself now. This guard, unlike most of them, wants to be friendly and chat to us. At first I was totally prickly. I didn’t give a shit what sports he was into and didn’t want to tell him about my kung fu, but I’ve mellowed a bit towards him – I’m trying to be loving and compassionate. It’s only through communication that people’s prejudices are challenged. Plenty of better human beings than me have managed to take that attitude towards their jailers. I know it’s a more liberating feeling than anger or dislike or anything else negative but then I think I can’t let them assume that I accept this.

They just opened the door and he pointed out Huwaida and me to another bloke and then they went away so I don’t know what they wanted. I feel like we should be organising some kind of rebellion since we’re in here but I don’t suppose there’s much we can do with five women, one in her fifties and huge, one who speaks no English, one who’s pissed on the wine she brought from Adelaide to share with the internet lover she’s crossed the world to kiss, one who needs to be able to get back into the country and me, who can barely walk to the loo.

The internet lover has got a Norwegian passport from being a student there for five years, as well as Jordanian citizenship and Israeli nationality and apparently he reckons he won’t be able to come back if he leaves, so it’s unclear whether they’ll meet in Jordan, Australia, somewhere else or nowhere. National borders are shit.

For some reason it’s started getting really loud, which it did this time last night as well. In the middle of the night I was convinced it was deliberate sleep deprivation torture, then I decided that was just middle-of-the-night paranoia but who knows. Maybe there are more arrivals at night. I’m not really sleepy after being still all day and I haven’t got a book to doze off with. I might try and phone my consul tomorrow and see if it’s possible to get my stuff or at least my book and disappear into a flight of fancy with the hobbits and the Riders of Rohan and the rangers from the North. One of the soldiers in the Peace Centre was reading the same book, but in Russian.

Presumably Strider would’ve just done them all with his sword and the hobbits would be small enough to wriggle through the bars and none of them would’ve been stupid enough to let themselves be detained and deported but I still think something good will come of it.

I’ve started to go really light headed when I straighten up or stand, which is a good sign. In another 36 hours they’re going to have to carry me anywhere they want me to go. I won’t go without a fight. If all else fails I could always just breathe on them or lift up my arms and ward them off with biological warfare. I wonder how long it takes to start tripping on dehydration. It may get to be sleep-dep as well if Muna, the Palestinian woman, keeps snoring so loudly.

I will not think of fruit juice. I’ll think of the people in Bethlehem instead, just as hungry and thirsty as I am and effectively imprisoned but without anywhere safe to go home to. I might just have to call for Pegasus. We could fly, all of us, out of here, over the church and drop in more food, unseen by the snipers, and everywhere else where people aren’t being allowed out, spend some time meeting people and helping them rebuild their homes, and then sleep in a beautiful forest somewhere, or up a mountain, or behind a waterfall, hidden from the whole world by a silver curtain and comfy on a cushion of moss and cuddled.

I think all this makes me really want to be a human rights lawyer. Still an activist too, but I want more tools. It’s weird here not knowing the law and my rights. It feels a bit like not understanding a language. It’s a good thing to experience as well from the point of view of defending asylum seekers – I won’t have a concept of what it’s like to know you’re facing death or torture when you get back, which I’m very very glad about, but it’ll give me a small insight.

I wonder if that’s enough political commitment to get me a training contract with Birnberg Peirce and Co. – as long as they don’t need me to come to Israel in the next ten years. I hope there’ll be a free and independent Palestine before then anyway. That’ll be 2012, the end of the Mayan calendar, Ragnaroc, or whatever Podric said it was called, and the fall of Babylon and the rise of the rainbow warrior, or somesuch. I don’t know – you can get wrapped up in hippy shit but it makes me happy to contemplate an end to this bullshit.

The Australian woman, whose name I must find out, was saying this was all bullshit and I said yeah, but less bullshit than bulldozing through people’s homes and shooting them in the streets and that’s the kind of bullshit the Israeli authorities are into.

I wonder if this is the longest ramble ever written on bog roll. I wonder if Guinness has a record for it. Maybe I’ll ring them when I get home. I’ve now been 77 hours in Israel and Palestine and 45 of them I’ve been in the custody of various authorities. That’s even worse proportions than my first Aldermaston camp. My head’s aching now. My joints are cracking a lot today, which may well be the dehydration. Supposedly your joints lose fluid first, Lyn was saying, although I’m sure flinging yourself around on a trapeze must make your joints crack a bit as well.

Think I’ll try to sleep some time away.



May 5th

Just writing that date made me realise, it’s a really significant anarchist date because it’s the fifth of May group that’s doing the hunger strikes in Turkey and theirs is much more hardcore than ours. I feel quite weak now and very very thirsty. My hands feel shaky and my feet are tingling and I’m very unsteady when I try to stand up. I stink, especially my armpits and my mouth mings. My voice sounds quite shaky and weaker.

It’s now about 43 hours since my last sip of water and longer since I last ate. I’ve got thrush but it’s not too bad at the moment. I’ve got cream in my backpack but I don’t know where it is or if they’d let me have my stuff. My pulse is quite fast but I’m not in any pain. Huwaida’s got aching kidneys. Even my stomach doesn’t hurt apart from intermittent hunger pangs but those are not so harsh now. There are occasional air bubbles coming up almost like burps but without any oomph behind them.

Supposedly Allegra, our lawyer, is coming to see us today but we don’t know if they’ll let her out of Bethlehem or in to see us. Yosi, another lawyer, says they are allowed to force feed us if they do accept we’re too weak to fly. It’ll be no worse than what happened to hundreds of suffragettes. Total non-co-operation is the only thing I’ve got now and if they have to do everything they want to do by force then it makes them confront their own violence because they have to decide, each of them, what they’re physically prepared to do in the face of our total non-violence.

I rang Juliet and they knew all about the action and I told her about the hunger strike – she was a bit worried about the water as well but I explained why and she just said be careful. She’s going to try and get in touch with media over there, lawyers who may be able to fight the deportation from there and peace people for solidarity actions. It’s a bank holiday tomorrow though, mayday. It was weird when she mentioned it because I thought, another bank holiday? Surely it can’t be June already and there’s not one in the middle of may and only when she said Mayday I realised I’ve been less than four days since landing in Israel. Time’s gone bendy and stretchy.

I’m so glad we’ve got the phone. We can’t get hold of the others so I’m guessing none of them have got their phones, or else they can’t charge them. I feel strong though now. They came to take away all the uneaten food and I asked them to please take it to the starving Palestinians in the church and around Bethlehem. They said yes, but in such a way as to make clear that they wouldn’t, not that I thought they would for a second, but there it is – we request that all the food we’re not eating be given to the people whom we’re being deported for bringing humanitarian aid to. Also we’ve been forcibly removed from Palestine which the Israeli army is illegally occupying and brought into Israel to be deported.

Huwaida was talking earlier to a journalist and said the Israelis have stopped shooting indiscriminately at the church and stopped setting bits of it on fire since the internationals got in but they did shoot dead a father of 11 in the courtyard yesterday – people go out there to pick greenery and there’s a sniper crane – a gun and camera mounted on a crane and remotely controlled, from the fucking Peace Centre. At that moment, when I heard her say that, a rush went up my spine and I sat up on my bunk and my head tingled and I thought I’ve never been prouder of anything I’ve done in my life. I was scared to come here and scared to do the action and I did it and it’s made such a huge and real difference to so many lives and I’m so proud to have been part of it.

I’m really glad as well that if I have to be in a cell, that I’m with Huwaida – she’s amazing. She works so hard and is so committed and so strong. She’s just been packing by phone for her wedding in three weeks back in the US. She says it feels materialistic to fuss about clothes right now when she could just borrow stuff from her sisters but those things, your own clothes, make such a difference when you already feel a bit like a space alien. She says her sisters are really fashionable and always have new clothes and she never goes shopping and looks really scruffy next to them.

She’s got a place to study law in the States next year but she’ll be really torn between studying law and freeing Palestine. Adam, her fiancé, wants her to just take the next flight home and her mum cried on the phone. It must be so hard for her. She’s been here two years working and organising and now she wants to fight the deportation but that would take time and she needs to get back for the wedding, so it’s become a juggling act between what’s best for her and what she feels is best for the cause and the campaign and what’s best for her family and Adam.

All I have to worry about is getting back in time for my law exams and telling people that actually I didn’t meet any Palestinians or see anything at all. I did, I suppose – I saw the streets of Bethlehem under curfew, with all the shops closed and people imprisoned in their houses without food, the trashed buildings, the crushed or burnt out cars, the carpet of broken glass, the military presence at the church, but most of it’s second hand.

Jeff told me about Jenin and it being rubble and people being shot at by snipers while they were digging in the rubble for relatives and about the empty streets in Hebron and hearing shooting and explosions at the hospital and I’ve seen the ambulances and fire engines freckled with bullet holes.

Gharda and Linda, the two British women fire fighters who came to the ministry of the interior, were travelling with the fire engines in Hebron and were stopped from getting to house fires and injured people. They saw doctors being shot for trying to attend to people lying bleeding in the street.

Plenty of people have seen it though, and maybe Al will get to see more when he gets out of the church. I hope he gets some good sound on the minidisc. I’m really pleased I’ve still got the dictaphone tapes – I had one in my shoe and one in my pants. The emptied my pockets and a woman soldier patted me down but I was a little bit flirty with her and earlier I was singing Hello Mary Lou and she was looking down the stairs at me and I was singing up to her, and then she got really shy when she was patting down over my chest so I didn’t spread my legs very wide and she didn’t go all that close to my pants, where a small hard rectangular dictaphone tape would probably have been quite noticeable. They never bothered checking my shoes at all.

Only Jeff and Tom really got interrogated and searched, which is quite random. They were taken away from the Peace Centre and Jeff said they were in separate vans and in his the driver took a corner too fast and the door flew open and the soldier in the passenger seat went flying out and the driver had to slam his brakes on and the other one had managed to grip the door rim with his fingertips and cling on. They started having a scrap about it and Jeff said he had to struggle not to piss himself laughing.

While I was with Kate and Marcia we laughed loads. Tactical frivolity works, I reckon, but there are definitely people who don’t get it. There were those who disapproved of me writing "Guns are Pants" on my sign for the action, that it should be political (plus of course none of the Americans understood what pants meant).. Oh yeah, like "End the Occupation", "Stop the Killing", "Americans Against the Occupation" and "Obey International Law" make such a mark on the public consciousness.

Jeff said there isn’t as much of the European style of protest with puppets and theatre and stuff in the US. Lots of them didn’t get it. I mean, I know tanks and guns and snipers are serious stuff but if you’re going to go and storm them, unarmed but for rice and lentils, a bit of frivolity and humour can only help. If you refuse to take something seriously it does begin to lose its power over you.

When I was being questioned, at one point, there were four of them in the room but only one asking questions – a bald bloke with glasses and he sat on the edge of the table so he was higher up then me and he took off his glasses and looked at me and I told him he had nice eyes, which slightly tripped up his fatherly demeanour and he started looking at me from under his eyebrows which made me giggle.

After a minute he said he realised I was under a lot of pressure and this was my reaction to it, which just made me laugh even more. None of them really knew what to do with me then. They just sat there shifting about in their seats and looking at each other and occasionally saying things to each other and trying to laugh at their own jokes but by then I was laughing at the fun of laughing and it had it’s own momentum and I was completely helpless.

They kept trying to get me to phone people in the church and tell them to come out because the Palestinians didn’t want them in there, which made me laugh even more – the idea that a bunch of gunmen had to ask their negotiators to ask the Israeli army to ask us to ask the people in the same building as the supposed gunmen to please go away. All this convolution after they opened the door to let the people in, having first specified the number and gender of people they wanted in there.

We heard last night that one of the Palestinian negotiators gave the names of the people inside to the European negotiators, which is shit because until then the Israelis had no idea who was in there – never mind any evidence that any of them were terrorists. They don’t seem to differentiate between a man who takes up a gun to defend his home town from invasion by a foreign army and a terrorist. Yet by their definition, their invasion of Palestine is only an armed defence of Israel. That surely makes them terrorists even on their own terms.

They just brought more food. I told them again that we were on hunger strike and we’d like them to take our share to the Palestinians who the Israeli army is starving. They said they understand that but they have to bring it to us anyway. Vera came and held out a bag of fruit to me and said something in Russian to the effect that we should eat and drink. I wish we could communicate more with her – she must feel so isolated. I think it’s her fourth day in here and she can’t really ask them anything.

Our lawyer, Allegra, still hasn’t been able to leave Bethlehem because of the total curfew. I just rang the consul to ask if he knows where Kate and Marcia are. He doesn’t but he said he’d try to find out if the Jerusalem consulate knows anything, although they’re both open only Monday to Thursday. I told him we’re on hunger strike refusing both food and water and that we’re physically weak. He’s going to try and find out what they’re planning to do, when they plan to try and fly us out, etc. The guards here don’t know anything – they say they’ll try to find out but we never hear any more about it.

Allegra’s on the phone now – Huwaida just asked her how long you can live without water. I went to the toilet for more paper a bit ago and had to lean on the walls and my head really spins when I stand up. I did a small wee, very dark, and put water on my head and face, which was gorgeous. I resisted washing my mouth out because I’d want to swallow. I can feel my pulse really pounding throughout my body, especially when I lie on my back.

A radio station in Tehran just rang for an interview, which is cool., but Allegra has strongly recommended that we sip water. She says it takes two or three weeks to die without it but your eyesight is the first thing to go. She says we need to co-ordinate the media stuff with the others who are hunger striking but that’s quite hard when we don’t know where they are. I don’t know. I can still see fine, I’m just weak. They initially said I’d be deported tomorrow, so if they try then and I’ve still had no water I really won’t be physically fit to fly, so I’m going to stick with it for now and keep aware of the eyesight thing.

It’s not a media thing anyway for me. I mean, it’d be good if the world’s press was talking about the illegality of the occupation and the oppression, the starving of children in Iraq, the outrageous behaviour of the UK and US around the world, without me needing to do stuff like this but they’re not and that’s never stopped me fighting any of it. It’s not important what the media write and say because that’s beyond my control as is everything else except my body and my physical non co-operation. I suppose the eyes go first because they dry up.



Had a bit of a sleep but it’s too noisy. My pulse is thundering in my belly like a drumbeat in a cavern. My body craves water. The hunger pangs still come as if they’ve forgotten that I’m not eating but they recede when my conscious mind reminds me there won’t be any food. I’m lethargic and when I sit up it takes a long time for the blood to get to my head. The skin under my nails is still pink though so I’m not anaemic. I was really healthy when I came in here and it’s still less than 4 days. There isn’t any water in here now anyway.

I’ll ring the consul again tomorrow, battery permitting, and try and get him to come, so they should let him see me, because of the Vienna Convention the Swedish consul was quoting at the Ministry, and then he’ll be able to see that I’m unfit to fly and hopefully make them act on the fact.

I think if I had a time machine there are definitely a few things I’d’ve done differently, but all that being unchangeable, I don’t have any regrets. I’m not at all unhappy, only thirsty, which is only a physical thing. Perhaps a mental thing as well – my whole being is thirsty, not just my body, but resistance sustains me. My body’s weakness is keeping my spirit strong.

I’d like to know when they’re coming for me, I suppose, to prepare for it, because even though I don’t expect it to be today, every time they open the door I think this is it. I suppose I’ll be worse tomorrow when I really expect them to come for me. And then I have to be prepared for any eventuality, the three I foresee being that they put me on the plane anyway, they put me back in here, with or without my bags, or they put me in hospital for force-feeding, either by IV or tube, which I can keep trying to remove until they restrain my hands or sedate me.

If they put me on a plane I guess I’ll eat and drink, or have water and juice at least and see how I feel about food. It’s going to be a shitty El Al flight though – ming. The occasional hunger pangs seem almost like friends to me now. I hope Mum doesn’t know, or Pop. A bit of me thinks I should phone them and tell them I’m OK but if I had to tell them I was in jail they’d get scared. I guess I could just say they were bringing in loads of food, which would be true, and not mention the not eating it. More selfishly though I don’t know if I could deal with it, but if she’s rung Jenny’s number and got Mary in the church she’ll know I’m not in there and may know I’m in jail but maybe not that I’m being deported, in which case she might be in a panic that I’m going to be here indefinitely and she may be unable to get the consulate because it’s the weekend.

Jeff’s got her e mail address and instructions not to mention jail or hunger strike, just that I’m safe and well and in good sprits – all true. He said he’d be home on Sunday, which is today, so she should get that soon as long as her computer’s working again and if she’s checking it often, otherwise she may just check this morning and not again for a week because there hasn’t been a message yet.

Anyway, I don’t know. I feel very tired. There’s not a scrap of energy left in my body, but at least there’s no fear – the butterflies I’ve had for days have gone and there’s no sense of pulling to be anywhere else, just a here and nowness. All of this will pass. I won’t be locked up. I won’t be hungry or thirsty or tired and that makes it all tolerable. It’s not as bad as a comedown, feeling physically rough and emotionally low.

I mean, having the 3rd Lord of the Rings book in here with me would inordinately improve life but its not on the cards any more than them bringing all the others here or coming and saying OK we can all go back to the West Bank. This too will pass – this growl of hunger, this desperate thirst, this exhaustion, this confinement. It did even for the Beirut hostages and they had a year or more for every day I’ve had in here and no way of knowing how much longer and definitely no phone and sometimes not another human being around and even for Nelson Mandela, and he spent 27 years locked up. Another day is nothing, even another very thirsty one. Everything will taste all the better afterwards.

Huwaida just woke up – there was a message from a British consular officer – Marcia and Kate are in a jail near Jaffa and my stuff is there. They think I’m supposed to be deported tomorrow and Al sends good wishes. I wonder what he’s going through. I hope he’s OK I bet he’s as hungry as I am, if a bit less thirsty. Obviously he’s managing to have contact with the consul: whether he’s initiating that or they are I don’t know. There was no word on whether Katie and Marcia are hunger striking as well or whether they’re meant to get deported at the same time as me.

Huwaida says she ate a pickle slice for the salt. My fingers taste really salty. She says her mouth feels really dry now. If I was having anything I’d rather it was water. When I sit up my breath gets really hard to reach and my head goes black and I sway. If these trousers get any looser they’re going to need tying up with polyprop. They were bad enough before the action, just not having a top button, but now there’s room for a baby hippo in here with me.

It’s 6 pm now – 50 hours since I last drank water. My eyes are still fine – I can see as far as usual and they don’t hurt. I have slight chest pains now and then and the thrush is intermittent – quite bad just now. I even asked Tamara, the Australian woman, if she happened to have any thrush cream among her belongings but she didn’t.

I wonder if Sammy’s made it to Jordan or what he’s doing. My eczema’s alright though – no shoes for days and no food that could possibly irritate it. I want to nick the doorkey and lock us in here so they can’t take me out. Earlier they left the door open with the key in it when Vera went out to the toilet but it was too early and her stuff is in here, although she’s barely got anything and she hasn’t been doing anything with it. Maybe I will if I get a chance tomorrow.

On the wall it says "Palestine will be free and all the people who quietly supported oppression will say they didn’t know" The roar of luggage trollies outside goes right through my head now. There’s a tiny little insect on the floor – it reminds me of the woodlice on the gnarled old dead oak tree at Ashton Court and looking at them bimbling about doing their stuff on the morning after winter solstice in all the magical mist.

Johannes is here now – he’s getting shipped out at 5am – they found his ticket. They were holding the five of them in a military prison in a settlement in Hebron, denying them lawyers, but the other four are being moved to a proper prison soon and they say they’re going to hold them indefinitely. Fuck knows what’s going on there. Trevor’s on hunger strike but is drinking water. If I get home and they’re still there I’m going to get on such a mission.

I had to stop talking to Johannes and sit down because I felt too weak, like my chest and stomach were hollow, like they were folding in and there was nothing to hold my body up. The effort of projecting my voice across the guardroom was too huge. I hope they’re OK. It must be scary for them just not knowing how much longer it’s going to be. Johannes says I should drink some water. Huwaida’s had a bit. I don’t know. I just don’t want to be able to get on that flight tomorrow.

I’m glad Trevor’s drinking water, if he’s there indefinitely – it’s only knowing I’m here for such a short time that makes it possible to cope with. Surprisingly the guard here is letting Johannes and me talk through the windows, which is a pleasant change from the fat wankers who tried to stop me even looking out and I stared him out and he gave up in the end because it was so stupid but they could easily close the windows and stop us talking. I feel like if I drink a bit I’ll lose my resolve and want more, like letting open the floodgates of my thirst.

Johannes has written a statement which he wants put out, but it’s basically a confession so Huwaida’s not sure. The settlement, Kiryat Arba, in Hebron, where the boys were held, is illegal in itself, as is the occupation, so our detention isn’t legitimate. We upheld international law and they have no jurisdiction to arrest us for actions taken on land illegally occupied by them. Also we’ve been forcibly taken from Palestinian land to Israel to be sent to another country against our will.

Johannes wrote that, as outrageously as we’ve been treated, it’s nothing to the treatment of Palestinians criminalised for wanting to live freely in their own country. It’s totally true – if we weren’t British and US and Swedish citizens we’d be getting a lot worse treatment. Johannes said they tried to treat them harshly at Kiryat Arba but the 5/6 of them stuck together and refused to be abused. Jimmy was with them and was shipped out yesterday.

I’m worried for them because I know I’d be scared if I was them, not knowing how long I’d be there and having no contact with anyone. I wonder if telepathic cuddles will work. Nathan already looked quite low when we were in the Peace Centre, especially when he was on his own and both Nathans have courses and lives here.

It’s shit – it’s just all really shit that the world can be this way – that people can create systems of such absolute oppression of others, especially when they have the history they have. But really the Jews should have been given a homeland in Europe because it was Europe which shafted them and Europe should have made amends and made space for them. For fucks sake, how dare Britain and the US just decide to found a state in the middle of someone else’s country. I know people say it was where the Jews wanted to go but really that’s not the point when it means displacing innocent people.

They had historical links from 1200 years before but no kind of rational claim on the land. The hypocrisy of it makes me so angry – Britain turning away boatloads of Jewish refugees even during the Holocaust, when Palestine was under British occupation, and turning them away from Britain too, and then just handing over someone else’s land to be a state which excludes and oppresses the people who had been living there. And all the while people whine that there are too many immigrants in Britain or whatever other country and they’re just coming for the money and they want to live their way in our country after we’ve fucked up theirs with our arms sales and our companies and our arbitrary drawing of borders and supporting of iron fist rulers.

By that argument – that Palestine could be made a Jewish homeland to the exclusion of the Palestinians because it was where the immigrants wanted to go – there should be a homeland in Britain for every national or religious group that wants to be there. I hope I never stop being angry about hypocrisy and injustice as long as I live. I know I must have my hypocrisies and inconsistent attitudes too, but they don’t kill people.

I just went from sitting to kneeling and even with the window and wall to hold onto I blacked out and couldn’t hold myself up. I walked to the toilet before and had to lean on the walls. The bloke said I should eat and drink and I said I won’t because my detention and deportation are illegal and I won’t comply with them. He said he thinks they’re very legal and I pointed out that I hadn’t been in Israel, I was in Palestine, which Israel is illegally occupying parts of, so Israel’s law doesn’t apply and I should never have been brought to Israel at all. He said, "Do watt you like" and turned away, so I thought fine, I’ll go out the door and back to Palestine, but I didn’t have the energy.

I long for water but the weakness is keeping me strong, the triumph of knowing they won’t be able to kick me out when they want to. Water will still exist in 2 days or however long it takes and so will juice and fruit and showers – I can wait. It sounds like the lads and maybe Huwaida are going to have to wait longer, but maybe they’re just bluffing the lads. Who knows with this arrogant bunch of uniform freaks. If you asked them where their own arses were they’d shrug and say they didn’t know.

"Excuse me, officer. Could you tell me where your arse is?"

"Ah? Watt?"

"Your arse, officer. Could you tell me where your arse is please?"

"I don’t know. It’s decided."

"Well could you at least tell me if it’s different from your elbow?"

"I don’t know."

They got some food in a bit ago, the guards, and it smelt far too good so I shut the window. I don’t need the smell of hot pasties just now. I can still see Johannes, but I couldn’t really speak to him much anyway. I’m so proud of Trevor for doing the hunger strike and Kate and Marcia for escaping and Al for being in the church and Huwaida for everything she does and is and of all of us for everything, for being here and daring to do what we did and all of us and all of it and nothing will ever take that away. Johannes said he was proud of me as I tottered back from the toilet. He’s such a beautiful little leprechaun boy and he’s got such a gorgeous smile.

Huwaida just got a suitcase brought in and has given me "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" to read which I’ll start on in a minute. She says she doesn’t regret anything. It was so the right thing to do, whatever the consequences. The only thing I regret is that I can’t speak Russian because I’ve managed to find out from the guards where Vera’s luggage is and what’s happening but I can’t explain it to her. They’re saying it’s gone to Russia and a man from the airline is going to come and talk to her tomorrow. She managed to communicate that she had a suitcase too, when they brought in Huwaida’s, so I asked them about it.

As I was thinking the line "I wish I could speak Russian," my brain added on "like Andy can", so I rang him and got him to explain it to her. I had to explain where I was first. "Hi Andy, it’s Jo. How good’s your Russian?" "Fair. Why?" "I’m in jail in Israel." "Oh my God. Ali. It’s Jo. She’s in jail in Israel." It turns out she’s from Lithuania, not Russia. He said she seemed confused and upset – unsurprisingly – and then she told him I wasn’t eating and looked ill. I had a quick chat with them both and gave them the consulate’s number. I’m so glad because she can’t’ve spoken her own language for days on end.

Between us we’ve now managed to get the fat shouty guard in a right paddy by daring to ask too many questions and all keep going in and out of the cell. Vera just cleaned Huwaida’s suitcase – kind of an expression of gratitude and friendship – she went and got a cloth and wiped all the mud off it. Ali and Andy said they’d seen about it on the news there, about the church action. He’s still got his knickers in a knot now, waddling about shouting (the guard, not Andy).

Ali asked how I was and I said the hunger strike was sustaining me. I tried to explain but I don’t know if they really understood. Fair enough. I must’ve said so many times that I could never go on hunger strike, but when there’s nothing else you can do to resist, it becomes not just possible but compelling. I’d’ve said I couldn’t do it right up until the point where I had to.

We’re able to communicate freely with Johannes now and the guard keeps trying to get us to drink. It’s gone ten now, in fact well past ten. I’m still very thirsty but feeling good. Time goes by relatively quickly in here. Surprisingly so. It dragged for a bit this afternoon but it went by. Tomorrow, I suppose, is the big day – I’ll see what I can do to continue the struggle. We put all our names to the statement the men wrote in the end and we put it out to PalSolidarity and wherever else.

I’ve no idea what time they’ll come for me. Fuck I want a drink. I’m glad I’m so stubborn. Emotionally I feel really good tonight. I feel stronger than I ever knew I could be. I think what I was most scared of was finding out that actually I wasn’t strong at all. It’s true – there’s nothing to fear but fear itself. Well, fear and bullets. Tomorrow I’ll be brave. If I have to hold out for another day or two I can do that. I’ll be strong. I’ll use the Jedi force and the Tao of Pooh and the Te of Piglet and the whatever it is of Hobbits and elves and rangers and anything else I can think of. In so few days I’ve met such gorgeous wonderful amazing people – Johannes and Trevor and Huwaida and Jeff.



May 6th

Monday. I’m supposed to get deported today. I jump every time they open the cell door. The consulate are not answering their phone and Peter’s not answering his mobile. I want him here when they try to take me because I can’t fly like this. There’s been such a cacophony outside all night – I don’t know how it’s possible to make so much noise.

63 hours without water. I feel like the insides of my mouth are raw, probably worn away by the acidic ming in my mouth. My joints are cracking and achy, my fingers are puffy, I’m shaky and my pulse is getting faster and harder. My eyes are starting to sting but that’s as likely lack of sleep as lack of water.

Huwaida just spoke to the Associated Press, which is good. Apparently there are journalists queuing up to speak to her in the US and she can get on every major TV station. Adam was in the compound with Arafat for a while and as his family is Jewish they made a huge story out of "Jewish boy from Brooklyn dines with Arafat" so it may not be so big a story but if it gets out that’ll be good – 13 international peace activists deported by Israel for taking humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians. People don’t realise that the Israeli state is doing those things because all they get told about is how many Israelis died in any given incident; every Palestinian bombing is reported, but not the steady stream of Palestinians killed every day because the Israelis wouldn’t let the ambulance through.

They took Johannes out in the wee small hours so that leaves four men still either at Kiryat Arba or moved to a civil jail, four women in two different places, four already deported and Ida, bless her, still on the loose at an undisclosed location in the West Bank.

They brought another two women in late last night or early this morning. Haven’t got their story yet but unfortunately they’re both smokers. I opened the window into the guardroom, which lets in more breeze even than the airshaft but it gets in my eyes – the breeze, I mean, but the smoke as well.

The effort of sitting up to write is getting painful. I thought the hunger pangs might have stopped coming by now – it’s 90 hours since I ate more than a couple of nuts or dates. But they’re quite busy this morning, wandering around my belly poking at me.

It’s tempting to just get on whatever flight they try to put me on and be home drinking all the water I want and eating food and going outside when instead what I’m fighting for is more of this, in effect, although obviously the ideal would be to make it so difficult for them to deport me that they give up.

In any case they’ll never be able to lift me because my head weighs a ton and half a ton of that is my eyelids. I’m wrestling with a desire to go and drink water in the bathroom. Bathroom – I’ve been with North Americans too long. There’s no bath in there. It now seems like such a massive mission to get down off this bunk and stand on my feet and get to the door to knock. It’s not like I need a wee really, although I do feel slightly like I could do a bit of one.

I have to keep stopping writing to wriggle about and gather my strength. My belly’s starting to hurt. We’ve still not been allowed to see a lawyer all the time we’ve been held, and we’ve not been arrested. We’ve only been able to speak to a lawyer because Huwaida’s got her phone and we don’t think the lads have been able to and we can’t get Marcia on her phone so we’re assuming she hasn’t got it or she can’t charge it, so probably she and Kate haven’t been able to see a lawyer, and we’ve none of us had a consular visit since the MoI.

Georgie and the others are working really hard, putting out appeals and mobilising people. Sharon’s visiting Baby Bush in Washington today, so they’re trying to get people in Washington to heckle him. It’s getting out there. The longer we hold out the more people will know and do stuff. I’m quite glad I don’t have any family ringing me – Huwaida’s getting a lot of pressure to drink, but for me I think if I drink I’ll be well enough to fly and I can’t let that happen. I’ll decide when I go.

The thing with the lads is supposedly that it’ll take at least a week to get tickets for them, yet they think they can put me on a flight to