Joanna Biggs

It seems as if the student occupations and protests of last year have already passed into legend. There have been documentaries, books, e-pamphlets, anthologies, songs and now TV dramatisations. In last night’s episode of Fresh Meat, Channel 4’s new (and increasingly funny) comedy about being a first year at university, the Manchester housemates took a coach to a London march. The screen split in two, and as the fictional students on the top of the screen pulled moonies and discussed which target they would throw their pigs' blood at, the real students marched on Parliament Square below.

On the same day that the architect of the Gherkin announced the death of the skyscraper, it emerged that Little, Brown have paid a ‘high six-figure sum’ for a romance, set in 2008 just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, between an out-of work-architect and a recently retired banker. So while we live through the consequences of the credit crunch – the Sure Start centres closing, the paramedics being sacked, the libraries disappearing – it seems we want to relive the moment in a cosy rom-com mode.

‘Fortnum and Mason’s is surrounded by police as this is a crime scene. Persons responsible will be arrested’: a message sent out by the Metropolitan Police text service for protesters at 18.33, just as I was getting home from Saturday’s TUC march. The slogan was ‘March for the alternative!’ – ‘what sort of alternative?’ Evan Davis asked on the Today programme that morning – but UK Uncut’s flyers encouraged us to ‘occupy for the alternative’. Fortnum’s was targeted because its owners, Whittington Investments, ‘have dodged over £40 million in tax’. Inside, ‘this has basically turned into a giant picnic,’ Laurie Penny tweeted, apart from the moment a display of chocolate bunnies was knocked over and had to be put painstakingly back together. Pictures and videos show protesters sitting on the floor, nestled between the glass cabinets and wooden counters or gathered behind brass railings, singing. The occupiers were arrested: of 149 charged by police on Saturday, 138 were done for 'aggravated trespass' or sitting on Fortnum's carpet for a few hours. Even Fortnum's have admitted that 'the damage is minimal.'