Left Birmingham just after 4am yesterday with a coach load of university students and took the long drive to Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History rally. It was my first time in Scotland (my ancestral home), so my camera phone was put to work taking blurry snapshots of indistinct countryside as it sped past.

The trip was entirely uneventful, and most of us managed to sleep through large parts of it. I caught up on a few podcasts (NPR’s latest ‘On The Media‘ is well worth a listen, incidentally) and listened to an Able Tasmans album, which oddly seemed like the best soundtrack as we rolled along through the Scottish border towns and farmland.

Once in the city, having parked the coach alongside what seemed like hundreds of others, there was a whole lot of standing around to be done.

We stood in an enormous and entirely stationary queue of people for about two hours while we waited for the march to work its way around. We had moved less than two paces forward when the announcement was made that the first marchers had made it all the way round, and that we now enclosed the centre of Edinburgh in a white band of people.

After another half an hour, we caught sight of the Maori Independence flag. Other New Zealanders! – so we abandoned the footsore throng and made our way over to express national solidarity.

There was a single New Zealand woman, holding a single New Zealand banner (Tino Rangatiratanga) – and she was part of the Dissent Movement. Apparently there were 15 other New Zealanders expected, but she hadn’t found them, and I think she was a bit put out.

So we hung out with the anarchists for a bit. In fact, we started the march with them, but they were too busy being cross and direct-actiony to be overtly friendly, so we hung back while they pushed down barriers and attacked police barricades.

As it was, in amongst their small crowd of 60-odd black-clad, face-masked activists, we had started to feel a little out of place in our white t-shirts, which might just as well have said “Frankie Say Relax” for all the revolutionary anger we were able to muster.

In the end, we strolled off amongst young families with strollers, representatives of Tear Fund, Christian Aid and the Islamic Relief Fund, and a bunch of polite suburban teenagers. In other words, a fair representative of the vast majority of the 225,000 reportedly in attendance (though it seemed like far more than that).

By the time we got back to the Meadows (butterscotch milkshake in hand), the 3pm minute’s silence was just about to start, and so we lay on the grass in the sun, listening to Billy Bragg lay all further responsibility squarely at the feet of 8 men (“We know where you live!!!”).

The silence was pretty moving, and the cheers, whistles, horns, rattles and sheer noise that followed it shook Edinburgh to its foundations (figuratively).

A few political speeches, a lovely performance by Baba Mal and an address by Eddie Izzard later, and we were back on the coach for the long drive home – accompanied by the sounds of the Live 8 concert on Radio 1.

All in all, a thoroughly pleasant way to change the world.

Made it back to Birmingham in time to set up the projector, turn up the stereo and watch the grand finale live from Hyde Park, while trying unsuccessfully to locate aerial photographs of the march online.

I’ve put a few of my own snapshots of the day online, if you want to have a look – and there’s a good report of the event (with video) from the BBC. Jake’s take on the day can be read here.

Slept in – and now I have the “Na-na-na-naaaa” bits of Hey Jude stuck on my brain today.