As we walked down Market St, I noticed three young boys (maybe Year 8 or so, she says, with her teacher’s eye) walking past and sort of giggling at us. One boy kept dashing in and pretending to march, then leaving the parade to laugh with his friends. I meandered close to him and offered my flag to him, and he fled back to the others. I followed him out and asked them in polite tones why it was so important to them not to be seen to be supporting equality, or words to that effect, and they ran. I am so passive-aggressive sometimes, but I do hope they learnt that they will be confronted if they try that sort of irritating crap. I also hope my students wouldn’t act like that; they certainly know not to use homophobic language around me, but some of them, I suspect, haven’t quite realised that homophobia is stupid and evil everywhere.

With respect to the slower walkers, I found that at one stage I thought about speeding up to catch up with the people chanting at the front, but then I thought that the slower walkers were isolated enough at the back already. A bit of thought from the organisers about spreading out some of their people leading the chants, so that there was some chant-leading going on in the middle and at the rear of the march as well, would be a useful thing to be more inclusive for slower walkers.

That aside, the rally was good, but a real pity we couldn’t hear all that much ( even standing closer to the stage, it was difficult). I get that the funding would’ve been tight, but more speakers, and a screen so more people could see the signer would’ve been good.

The only downsides were a guy spraying deoderant at us from the footpath as we marched, and another guy on the train ranting about us in very derogatry terms. The driver called the police on him, and he ran off at the next station. I wish I was brave enough to confront him, but I just sat in my corner, like a cowardy custard.

In terms of accessability it was incredibly inadequate – no interpreters and we walked up a hill, on tram tracks.