It should have been called the "Perv's Protest". Hundreds of sado-masochists came out of their closets to join the anti-war march, hobbling along Whitehall in their stiletto heels and latex dresses - and that was just the men! Changing facilities were provided for the adult babies and their minders and while-u-wait shoe repair stalls at Piccadilly did a brisk trade in reheeling stilettos ready for the last leg of the march to Hyde Park.

Even before the march began, police were mobbed by a mob of hardcore uniform fetishists and by a contingent of submissives demanding to be arrested, thrown into a police dungeon and subjected to "some police brutality, please officer". The presence of police uniform fetishists among the marchers initially caused confusion, however, the Met are now said to be "considering the latex option" for community policing in strongly BDSM areas.

Outside Downing Street, several protestors chained each other to railings and solicited floggings from passers by. In an attempt to disperse the queue of obliging flogger-wielding dominants, police raised batons. The reaction of a number of CP enthusiasts was to "present" their behinds for a smacking. There was a small skirmish among those wishing to be beaten. However, in an interview after the protest, one CP enthusiast expressed disappointment at the batoning, saying, "My master gives me better pain with a paddle.".

When the Metropolitan police ran out of handcuffs, several "good citizen" sado-masochists offered them the use of their own. At the end of the day, police stock-checks revealed they had gained 54 pairs of handcuffs, including several of the newer designs.

Among the groups marching were WHIP (War Hurts Innocent People) and SCAT (Submissives' Coalition Against Terror) and, looking somewhat confused and out of place among the flesh, leather and latex, Bongo For Peace. Slogans proclaimed "Bush is Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place" and "Mass Debate Against War". The march was led at a brisk pace by the Saddam Ass A-Kisseds Whip & Drum Ensemble.

At the rear, several whippers-in kept stiletto-stummbling stragglers up to speed. There was a small fracas towards the end of the rally when a group of armoured pony girls and boys charged the police horses. This was preceded by a cry of "ramming speed" from the drummers.

Numerology uses added number values (A = 1, B = 2) etc to find significance in words and connections between words. It's a tad selective as the numbers can be grouped in different ways e.g. 613 can be 61 + 3, or 6 + 13 or 6 + 1 + 3 at a whim, I mean at the numerologist's discretion. And it's selective about where to stop doing addition - why stop when the sum is the inauspicious 13 when you can add 1 + 3 and get a harmless 4 and thus neutralise the numerical evil?

The great numerology schism divides the orthodox numerologists, who add and subtract, from the progressive numerologists who add, subtract, multiply and divide. Really desperate progressive numerologists will resort to square roots and cosines to make the numbers fit the theory.

Vordemanology takes numerology a step further and adds an optional dash of conspiracy theory for good measure. It is, of course, named after maths wizard (or should that be maths witch?) Ms Vordeman, of the British TV show Countdown. Given a random hand of numbers and a randomly generated end result, she was tasked with creating an equation (add, subtract, divide, multiply, brackets) which used each number once to get a number as close to the end result as possible.

Unlike strict numerologists, vordemanologists can not only group the numbers in any way they desire, they can apply random steps of add, subtract, multiply, divide, brackets. In this way, any two unrelated events or parties can be connected via an arbitrarily chosen "significant" number. Even better - the names of companies, world leaders etc can be linked via Vordemanology into a great global conspiracy.

There is already a movement to separate progressive vordemanologists from othodox vordemanologists. Progressive vordemanologists argue that square root, raise to the power of and cosine are valid vordemanological operators necessary for the dark art of numbers to move into the modern technological age.

See also: Bistromathics (Douglas Adams); the most powerful computational force known to parascience.