Armed with nothing more than a megaphone and some photocopied flyers, around 40 protesters managed to all but shut down the Princes Street branch of Topshop. We spread out through the shop, and while some people circulated and talked to customers, a few of us sat down in front of the tills - although there were still some determined (desperate?) customers who continued to make purchases over our heads. The shop manager asked us to leave, and when this didn't work, a police officer came round to advise us that if we didn't leave of our own accord, they would begin steps to arrest us. We didn't much like the sound of that, and the consensus of the sit-down protest group was that we should continue our protest outside.

As we left, the doors were locked behind us, and out-of-order notices were placed on at least one of them. Quite appropriate, given what most of us think of Arcadia's business practices. We continued our picket outside of the store for almost an hour afterwards, with a reasonable amount of support from the general public; it certainly wasn't unanimous, but this is a small city where a lot of people work in the financial services industry, so tax justice can be an uncomfortable issue to confront. Eventually, the police decided that having us standing in front of the doors was a health and safety risk to the small number of staff and customers still inside as we were blocking fire exits, so we were moved away from the doors to allow police officers to form a human chain across the doors. We had been standing in a loose group around the door and hadn't been preventing anyone from trying to enter or leave the building - a few people had even walked through the protesters to rattle the locked doors - so for a little while the police were providing a better blockade than we had. However, commerce was still being disrupted, so they re-arranged themselves into a different formation, creating an anti-protest tunnel to get shoppers from the street to the front door.

When business started to get back to normal in Topshop, a few of the police drifted off, assuming that we had reached a stalemate. We took this opportunity to leg it along the street to Vodafone. It's a small shop, so we managed to fill it, and this time we all sat down because it was nice and warm, and we didn't want to be moved on too quickly. The police didn't seem too keen on moving us on immediately, so we all took a few minutes to get warm, while the Vodafone staff locked themselves in the back room of the shop. After that the protest played out in the same way as it had in Topshop: we were threatened with arrest, and we moved to the street outside, except that this time, with a much smaller shop front for us to cover, it was impossible for us not to block the doorway. We did some enthusiastic chanting, handed out leaflets, then gradually drifted off home. Today there is news on the local activist grapevine that the police followed some of the protesters to the pub, and forced at least one person to give their details.