The police were laughing at him.  He'd wasted their money, time and resources and they were bloody well laughing at him!  Pole dragged furiously on his cigarette and spat on the roadway.

'OK, you've had your fun,' the sergeant was smirking into his megaphone, 'now go home in a quiet and orderly fashion.'  The cordon of police officers buckled in the centre, allowing passageway for the fifty or so cold and bored protesters who, after having been hemmed into a disused cul-de-sac for the last two hours by skilful police manipulation, were only too glad to be allowed to disperse sheepishly and head for the nearest pubs and takeaways.  A few half-heartedly stuck some fingers up at the police as they passed or mouthed nearly inaudible profanities - mostly on a porcine theme - just to show that they had won the day really.

Derek Pole couldn't believe their passivity.  One arrest for drunken and disorderly behaviour, and a few jeering anti-police songs.  That was hardly the anarchy he was trying to instigate, was it?  He climbed on to a low wall that ran alongside the cul-de-sac and waved his arms at the dispersing crowd.

'This ain't over yet!  Don't let them corral you like bloody sheep!  Remember, today the streets were ours, and not the council's!  We had a major victory and we can do more!'

A protester with green spiked hair and Machine Gun Etiquette painted on his leather jacket turned and stared at the protest organiser.  'A cul-de-sac was ours, today, Derek.  A cul-de-sac that no one ever uses.  They herded us in here like schoolboys at assembly time, and you know it.'

Pole snarled at the protester.  'Yeah, and you let 'em!  All of ya!  We could have sealed off the city centre.  We could have stopped traffic for a whole bloody day if you had just listened to me; if you hadn't all been so apathetic.'

'Do yourself a favour and go home, Derek.  We did our best.  The punk turned his back and headed off with the rest of the protesters.  Derek stood on the wall like a failed general haranguing a deserting army, and saw that the police were climbing into their riot vans, having decided there was going to be no more disturbance here today.  The final insult.  They weren't even waiting for him to leave!

Derek climbed down from the wall, conscious that his face was burning, and threw his cigarette stub after the departing Machine Gun Etiquette jacket.  Bastards!  Trying to muster as much dignity as he could, he strode towards the mouth of the cul-de-sac, past the few remaining police officers who were putting away emergency traffic cones and cracking jokes about the unconventional dress of the Streets Are Ours activists.  He spotted a telephone box across the main road leading to New Street Station - the protesters' intended target for isolation - and trotted over to it.

He thumbed in some coins and dialled.  It was not a call he was looking forward to.  Somebody was going to be decidedly unhappy with today's lacklustre results.  The protest had hardly brought one of the busiest zones of Birmingham city centre to a standstill as had been the desired intention.  He was going to look like a right prat.  And, unlike the police, somebody was not going to be in the mood for laughing.