Strange day yesterday - I had to watch the lunchtime news to see if my usual route to the greengrocers was blocked off. Police had raided the local mosque overnight. At 4 pm, when I eventually set off to buy the weekly vegetables, I found a police van still parked on the little back street. I was directed to go around, where other small, curvy roads were full of tv and news vans. Satellite dishes and tall masts protruded from vans into bare trees. Huge banks of screens, buttons and switches could be seen inside the vehicles. A few journalists stood under umbrellas, looking at the deserted area and the dozens of cops surrounding the mosque. As if waiting for something to happen.

Local opinion ranges from "well done, about time" to anger at the violation of a place of worship. Would you ever have seen cops surrounding a church at the height of IRA troubles?

"They could have waited 'til 7 am, knocked on the door, and they'd have been let in. The police have never been denied entrance to the mosque," said local worshippers on the evening news. Others Muslims admitted to unsavoury activities going on there - like your neighbour has said, the place is divided, between ordinary Muslims who want to go about their business in peace, and those who follow the notorious radical, one-eyed cleric.

Who's to say really. Maybe the cops didn't have to make such a big show of it. But if they had just knocked on the door, would that have given anyone inside a chance to run out the back with any suspect materials? (not that anything that significant has been found so far - CS gas, a stun gun, a replica - all of which are legal in plenty of countries including France and the US.)

It fits in with Tony Blair's propaganda, his desperate attempts to gain support for World War 3. But still, I have much less a problem with searching activities than with bombing people. The worst part is the way they did it, and how it's angered Muslims, further widening an already frightful gap.

I've got much more to write - weekend and so on - but an absent boss and panicked colleagues mean I've got get back to plugging up holes in the sinking ship.

Petra