No protests, please, it's far too dark and muddy

One option for the march was the Dome. The next offer was probably going to be Chernobyl

Tessa Jowell must have been jealous. As Secretary of State for Culture, she doesn't get to join in with her colleagues' splendidly surreal statements concerning the war against Iraq, so last week she announced the protest march against the war wouldn't be allowed into Hyde Park because "it would spoil the grass". Maybe that's why we've taken to bombing countries that have lots of desert – there's only the odd cactus, and they can be replaced with a trip to Homebase.

Tessa was also concerned there was a health and safety issue as it would be "very muddy" and "many of the protesters would be leaving after dark". But then she suggested the march go to Victoria Park, in east London, instead. I suppose because it's a couple of miles further north that it doesn't get dark so early there. And although they have grass, it's from east London, so it's hard council estate grass, not that wimpy West End stuff they have in Hyde Park. If too many people trample on the grass in Victoria Park it goes: "Oi, watch it. Reggie Kray's dog used to run on me, so I've got connections."

The other option was the Millennium Dome. I think you have to give them the benefit of the doubt here and assume they were taking the piss. The next offer was probably going to be Chernobyl.

Also in recent weeks, Hyde Park has been hosting a Star Trek Convention, which doesn't appear to have been banned. I suppose Tessa thought there was no need to worry about them, because if they started sinking into the mud they could all be beamed up into safety.

Mud and dark, what a pitiful excuse, the sort of thing Saddam would try. "We didn't invade the Kurdish village. We bulldozed it because it was in a soggy area with bad drainage and now they've been forced to flee south they'll get a decent summer."

It's possible Tessa Jowell was genuinely concerned about how the marchers would cope with sinister forces such as mud and dark. Maybe she'll be stood on the roadside, dabbing everyone's mouth with a napkin and saying: "Put your trouser legs inside your socks or you'll ruin those and they're clean on." Or, if you were cynical, you might imagine the attempt to ban the march from the park had a political motive.

This looks especially likely as the authorities in New York are trying a similar tactic, refusing to allow the protest there to travel along the normal route. I suppose the same thing applies, New York's known for nothing if it isn't its rolling vistas of flora and fauna, and you don't want a bunch of uncouth dissidents with placards disturbing the tranquil ambience by trampling on the freshly mown lawn that is Wall Street.

Hyde Park has been used by all manner of carnivals and demonstrations for over 150 years, including those of the Chartists during the Industrial Revolution, without any discernible long-term damage to the ecostructure. So that makes this Government more authoritarian than the one run by Lord Liverpool. Either that or they've developed one of these neuroses, like these people who can't stop washing their hands but worse, which makes them afraid that their parks could be spoilt by letting people walk on them. Maybe every night Blair crawls through counting the blades of grass, then runs home screaming: "There's three missing."

The amazing part about this story is it's not just an issue of freedom of speech for a minority cause. It's a march that could well be the largest to take place in Britain, that has the support of the majority of the country, that is backed by figures such as Nelson Mandela and Jesse Jackson and that will be reproduced on the same day in 56 countries. So, after the ban was announced Tessa Jowell was besieged with complaints, the police suggested she revoke the ban and now she's backed down.

Maybe to save face she'll put out a statement saying: "At the time the protest was announced, a few weeks ago, it was getting dark at about 10 to four, but following our discussions on15 February it won't start to get dark until an hour later, which is a reasonable compromise."

If the Government is genuinely concerned about grass, I'm sure hundreds of anti-war protesters would be willing to renovate the entire park afterwards, perhaps with Charlie Dymmock in a special edition of Ground Force. After two days there'll be trellises all over the Serpentine, Marble Arch will be one part of a rock feature and the ice-cream hut will be thrown in a skip and replaced with gravel. Then all 500,000 of us could wait excitedly as Alan Titchmarsh whispers: "Ooh, here she comes. Ba Baaa, hello Tessa, we've made a few changes, what do you think?"

Then the rest of the government might pay equally close attention to health and safety on issues related to this war. If so it might occur to someone that if you're not careful, when a shower of cruise missiles lands in the middle of a city, it can cause a really nasty accident.