MORE STREET TROUBLE IN BUDAPEST

I knew that something would erupt yesterday on the anniversary of the 1956 uprising in Hungary. The first signs of this were when I was recording some music in my flat and I could hear a lot of shouting - with additional reverb - coming through the headphones. I stuck the microphone out of the window to record some of what was going on. The crowd - or elements of it - were very angry, chanting "You fucked it up!" (presumably a comment on the governing party's handling of the post-1989 era). I could see people carrying, as well as lots of normal Hungarian flags, the version of the flag adopted by the wartime Nazi-supporting Arrow Cross.

Later, I assumed it had all blown over and thought nothing of it when my friend invited me out for a drink. Of course, the streets were still full with the commemorations. I heard the sound of an orchestra and saw people laying candles on the pavements as tributes to the dead. Some of the main junctions were impassable, so I had to make a big circle in order to meet my friend, trying to arrange everything on a jammed phone network. The first I knew of trouble was when he phoned to suggest a different bar after having run into the middle of a riot and having had a tear gas canister going off nearby him.

We met in a central bar which is usually packed but yesterday almost deserted. I was born in 1968 and, being a true child of the 60s, have been waiting all my life for some sort of Green revolution, so I felt guiltily like an armchair (non-)activist, not being in the thick of things, but reading about it on Reuters and BBC News instead, and sipping beer! But it's not my cause and I have no reason to object to the government here. We were told it would be safer not to leave the bar.

Of course, we did leave. It was like walking into a scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four. To begin with, there was the tear gas that made my friend's eyes stream. Drifting clouds of it were picked out by the orange/pink of the street-lighting. It smells acrid like the waterproofing spray for shoes. The exits from the area where I was and the route back to my flat were blocked by ranks of helmeted riot police. People were wandering about aimlessly, trying to get away from the rioters and avoid the police. You could hear loud bangs going off (rubber bullets, I later learned) and helicopters were circling overhead. Again I went a circuitous route, and ended up going right past the stand-off at Ferenciek Tere, where a few minutes later the barricades went up and all hell broke loose. I noticed that a lot of the paving stones had been ripped up, a sure sign that people had come equipped for trouble.

Got home, watched the rest on TV. Phoned my friend whose flat overlooks one of the flashpoints. It's his photo that's attached. As he described the battle below, the call was interrupted by the report of a gun going off, and he saw someone collapse. Amazing to think all these incredible scenes were just streets away.

This morning, looking from the tram at Nyugati (West) Station, the street seemed immaculate; no sign that there had been any trouble there at all. The atmosphere is still highly charged, but I have a sense that the organisers who wanted to unseat the government have lost their big opportunity and that things will settle down as everyone returns to work.

Pestiside's leading article on Monday's events
Riots in Hungary blog

I was sent this poem by email. The warmth in the air is just starting to decay here in Budapest, so it's been on my mind.

THE SEVEN SORROWS TED HUGHES

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.


And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle’s palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it’s gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox’s sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox’s prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.