The day the circus came to town.

This was going to be a post about how wonderfully English this whole protest thing in the area was. The groups wishing to protest had, by all accounts, had to submit their applications ahead of time and were then allocated somewhere they could stand and wave their banners etc.

There were even some sitting in the local hotels having a nice cup of tea before taking their boards and showing their reasons for being there. We English need our tea. It's liquid oxygen for some I'm sure and vital to keep an outraged air going on a long cold northeast day.

Also a "Fathers for Justice" protestor had donned a Superman outfit and climbed onto the Tyne Bridge. He planned to stay put until Monday, or at least while the weather was ok and he had some food to eat. Bless. Hope he's got his sandwiches with him.

Two wonderful pictures of how we do protests by and large. Ok, I'll grant you that occasionally things get out of hand and something escalates but in the main it's wonderfully restrained and an island nation in snapshot.

Now in that air of pleasantness I made the mistake of grabbing a few snaps with my phone of the general scene around the quayside and bridges - nothing close-up or detailed - just something to capture the general air of protest. This isn't an everyday happening and it would be nice to have a record of it once the circus leaves town on Monday.

Whilst walking up past the Hilton Hotel, where the Labour Party will be staying, I was swooped on, if you'll excuse me at least one sensationalist word, by two officers and given a quizzing as to who I was and why I was taking photos etc.

Now I'm all for security and keeping us locals safe but I must have been there for about 15mins. In the drizzle. Cold.

They were both polite and very business-like but there's something a little unsettling about being asked questions like name, address, where I worked, had I got a police record etc

The killer one was "Have you been doing anything I should know about, Sir ?". I was very close to telling him I was quite pleased about my blog but then realised this wasn't the sort of thing he meant. Silly me.

They even took my phone and had a good leaf through the pictures on there "as some officers don't like their photo's being taken". It's a fair point - have you seen some of them ?

We're the ones being disrupted by this and, at the end of the day, the ones paying the £2.8million to police it. Surely they should expect that local people would be as interested in the fact it's happening here as the event itself.

I'm going to add some of the pictures - carefully chosen, of course ! - as a post shortly. My eye for the comedy value has spotted a few things worthy of sharing....