What a lovely sunny day it was on Saturday. It was glorious strolling along the Thames. Complete strangers would stop and chat and engage with Molly, my companion. She’s a massive flirt and bats her long eyelashes at everyone, rolling over and begging them to tickle her. She seems especially attracted to women, which is nice.
We got as far as Richmond Bridge and Molly started pulling me into this friendly rowing club. We both got seduced here once before, Molly by all the attention she was getting and me by the membership recruiter. With each pint of lager, the joining fees had started to sound less daunting.
While dithering at the entrance, I stood aside to let this heavenly blond creature get past me and join her friends. While trying not to ogle, I furtively watched her as she put down her placard and air kissed the other members.
Hang on, she’s been carrying a placard! What message could this fashionable beauty have been pushing? I discretely read the message. The heading said Smash the Tories.
There was some kind of picture underneath that – maybe scenes of a class battle – and the footer of this poster carried the words Socialist Party.
I thought, by the look of her, she must have spent the morning at the beauty counter at Selfridges. But no. She’d been clearly taking part in that day’s protest march, aimed at bringing down the democratically elected government, by any means necessary.
Good grief! How things have changed. It’s great if members of rowing clubs no longer go on about house prices, school runs and how the country’s gone to the dogs. But I’m worried those once fashionable obsessions have been replaced by something worse.
It seems that revolutionary socialism is the new house prices. Meanwhile, if the means of (incompetent) production are in the hands of Uncle Jeremy Corbyn, people will be less worried about going to the dogs than going to the gulags.
If you’re one of the people for whom this time of year is The Season, there will be one topic of conversation this year – whether you’re at Glyndebourne or Glastonbury. Smashing the Tories. It’s so on trend.
Mind you, one thing hasn’t changed. Getting your kids into a top school will still be a big conversation. And that, naturally, will depend on your social status. Yep, the class struggle will never end.
