Today I joined the picket line outside King’s Place, home of the Guardian and Observer, amid a two-day strike in protest of the proposed sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media.

“It’s fucking embarrassing it’s got to this point in the first place”, says one old feature writer, who greets me like a friend but probably can’t remember my name (in fact, he’s the guy who initially countersigned my NUJ application).

Tortoise will no doubt will take a few of the choice bits of the Observer and purge the rest, like The Beano taking Bananaman and leaving the rest to rot.

Whatever your feelings about The Observer – and mine are very mixed, given their transphobic and pro-war “liberal interventionist” leanings over the years – from a press plurality point of view this is very much A Bad Thing, and The Guardian have dropped a massive bollock in thinking they’d be able to push this thing through without a fight.

Yesterday Billy Bragg turned up to sing, which is better than Ed Sheeran when you think about it.

It was joyous to see old friends and colleagues joining the action. I’ll always have a complicated relationship with the paper but there are good people there.

Seeing the joy and surprise on the face of people I hadn’t seen in years was a lovely feeling – “you look exactly the same!”, said Rachel, untruthfully – and catching up and expressing solidarity was glorious.

Being there was also a nice reminder that I have no regrets about getting out when I did, though my bank balance might disagree on that front.

All the best to the whole liberal conspiracy, no matter how we disagree, and all power to the union.