It's 8:30 in the morning and it's cold out here at the tram stop. Is it just my imagination, or are there less cars on the road than there usually are at this time? I'd like to think so, but I'm biased. If we really had that much power, we wouldn't be in this predicament.

The tram finally arrives, which is in itself a disappointment. What is she doing here, this tram driver? Doesn't she know? And, yes, the tram seems emptier today, but maybe it's just the time of morning.

I'm running late.

But with so few cars on the road, it should be faster to get to the city. Gotta get to the city. Me and a hundred thousand other people. Where are they all? Waiting for me?

We're moving faster now, clunking down to the junction. Any takers? I doubt it. Not in the houndstooth capital of the world. No need for rights when you have a four-wheel-drive. That's might, baby. And it matches your shoes.

Six roads intersecting. Two futures diverging. What could have been? We'll never know. Caught on this path like a tram on the tracks. I'll have a Daily Zone One to the death of democracy, thanks. And all the while that song plays over and over in my head, except I'm not sure if these are the right words. Is it 'must be strong' or 'marches on'? I suppose the meaning is the same, and anyway, it's the first line that's most important.

I haven't eaten breakfast.

This will change nothing. It didn't last time. I worked so hard and when it came to fruition I thought we'd won. But he was watching the other channel. The same will happen today. I've had my hopes crushed now, but not my 'blind, bloody-mided brute stubbornness'.

The trams up Swanston Street are stopped because of what is happening, so hundreds of us are moving defiantly, purposefully, on foot, up the hill. There are nods and glances of recognition, but our manner is businesslike. The smiles and hugs will come later. We get closer and converge with hundreds, thousands more. We can hear our target in the distance, that crackling, feedback passion, indecipherable challenges issued to an absent enemy.

I'm here; we're all here; it has begun.

I find my lot and exchange pleasantries and vitriolic sentiments. It has started to rain, but still more arrive and more and more and I cannot see the edges even from my post atop the statue. That glorious statue which embodies why we are here. The colours of the clans highlight the scene: yellow firehats, purple balloons, red flags, orange stickers. All in clusters. And declarations everywhere, painted up and held aloft.

The crackling stops and we move off under our pennant, soldiers going into war for our lords: fairness, justice, equality, what is right. We walk and sing and feel a sense of something. The shared desire to achieve is achievement in itself.

The rain lessens and we keep walking, finally coming to a stop, clogging the city like a blood clot, haemmorhaging the artery that is the CBD. A man speaks, and another, and another. This time more decipherable, less crackling, more booming. The crowd pushes forward but still, the voice tells us, the last of us have not been able to leave the starting point. There are just so many.

We stand here and call shame upon our enemy, and cheer together, and hope together. But the overwhelming taste in the air is The Fray. The War. The people united will never? Will we? It is about to get as bad as it has been in our time, and every single one of us knows the hopelessness of the situation. It is why we are here. Not because we believe we will win, but rather gathering in time of real disaster, like villagers gathering in the village centre in the aftermath of a storm. We come together to mourn our dead and share our losses. We come to see what we can do together to Make It Better. But not one of us knows how to undo what has been done.

It finally disperses, and we make our way back up the hill to that great hall, that workers' palace. Now comes the silently-promised hugging and the smiling and the friendship. Business is over. Now is empowerment, achievement, and other positive, assertive nouns. We walk back up and the rain comes down now for real, and we laugh, and strangers share umbrellas and winks and stories and aspirations and dreams and ambitions, and carry each other's declarations. Now all the colours are mixing up and it's a speckled rainbow down here on the street with the rain up above.

Here in the bar I can choose from a Socialist Chardonnay or a Proletariat Red, but I have a liquid bread and call it breakfast. Soon the room is filled with solidarity, even in the face of destruction, on this, the death of our comrade, Democracy.

We face the toughest times I have seen in my lifetime, but today has shown that although we are divided and conquered, no one of us is an island. I mustn't give up *hope* - that near-certainty that I'm not going to win, but that I'll be buggered if I let them get away with it without an A-grade shitfight.