Even Nelson was bored!

Stop press: Our up-to-the-fortnight news service brings you 'photo from the front'!  Simply scroll to the bottom of this post to see, in glorious technicolour, the 'Duffandnonsense News Service' ace reporter risking his wallet amongst the great unwashed. ("I made my excuses and left," says 'Dave' Duff (39),  man of letters - and I do the jokes, do you mind!)

A very peculiar thing has occurred. My regard for the intelligence of the average member of the 'Trot-lot Tendency', hitherto, nil, has now shrunk further!  I suppose that puts it into negative territory.  Let me explain.  The average SWP-er, and his ilk, are regular attenders and participants in demos.  They travel miles to reach them and turn out in all weathers.  I suppose, like old vets the world over, they sit in the pub (or the cells) afterwards reminiscing about old campaigns, showing off their truncheon scars, coughing into blood-stained hankies as they recall the tear-gas they inhaled at this or that particular demo.  Fair enough, most of them are young, or stupid, or both, and anyway, it keeps them off the streets, er, well, on them, actually, but you know what I mean.  However, amongst all the hardships they suffer for their cause, they never mention the most extreme test of all that they have to undergo - the speeches!

As you know, I attended my first demo yesterday.  Happily, it was cool and breezy and so the doubtful personal hygiene habits of many of the scrofulous placard-wavers was never put to the test.  As we approached up Whitehall I could hear a distant keening.  I wondered if it was a counter-demo by some Muslim banshee bewailing the insult to Islam.  Not so.  In fact it was a lady who, I learnt later, was called Maryam Namazie.  Amplified several times over, she squawked and shrieked her way through a speech that went on, and on, and on, and on ... until in the end I turned to 'Son of Duff' to tell him that my support for free speech was draining away along with my will to live.  Next up was an il-Lib-non-Dem, smoothy-chops MP whose name I missed.  He was obviously an error of navigation because the one thing the il-Lib-non-Dems can agree on is that they want Britain to ditch all of its ancients laws and rights so that we can be ruled by dictatorial crooks and apparatchiks from Brussells.  Peter Tatchell - a man who were he tell me the time I would probably give him an argument but who, nevertheless, I admire for his courage and consistency - came on and boomed away for far too long but worse was to follow!  Up stepped some cove from the Secular Society.  His speech was so long, so disjointed, so hesitant, so badly delivered that he certainly convinced me there was no God because no God would ever have inflicted such punishment on an unsuspecting audience.  He made the average vicar's sermon sound like an oration from ancient Athens.

It was around this point that I noticed the "Americans in Paris" exhibition at the nearby National Gallery and decided to make my excuses and leave.  Oh, the relief!  I mean, if several speakers are going to say the same thing, at least try and say it in different ways!  And if you have the temerity to deliver a speech from a public platform, at least do your audience the favour of learning the rudiments of public speaking.  Being lambasted with deadly rhetoric should be made a crime and I thought of making a complaint to the police, but they were too busy taking down complaints by people who had been offended by something other than deadly boredom.  It could have been my imagination but I'm sure I heard Nelson mutter about how he'd give his right arm to shut that lot up - before remembering that he didn't have a right arm!

Anyway, a tranquil stroll round the American paintings, many of which are absolutely stunning, helped still my beating heart, and then it was off to the pub to meet up with 'Andy' of 'Barmcake fame and his pal, Saul, for a pint or two and some pleasant chat.  My first demo and my last, thank God!  And I've just remembered, it was that Oliver Kamm who got me involved.  He has a lot to answer for - and I didn't even see him there!  Splitter!

PS:  Subject to the services of 'Son of Duff' (or, SoD, as 'Larry' puts it so wittly) a picture of your intrepid reporter may appear later this evening.

Comments

[anon]

'i' before 'e' except after 'c'

Alec (Rather be smart than pompous)

PS Para 2, line 2

[David Duff]

Thanks, 'Anon', I really appreciate that. I have a sort of paranoia that my semi-education will show up in my writing, so I am always grateful for corrections.

[Jew90]

I'm so glad I didn't attend now.

This march has achieved something unique. It handed PR boosts to the Islamist nutcases at MAC, the extreme left and the extreme right. The only people not to have gained anything were the people who the march was supposed to represent.

A big disappointment.

Glad you enjoyed the 'Americans in Paris' exhibition. Must make a point of seeing that myself.

[David Duff]

Yes, a typical liberal cock-up!

[The Blind-Winger Jones]

Duffer ? Is that the same dear old Davey Duffer who once worked at Shrill & Coopers Lozenge Factory on the Huddersfield Road ? As I live and breath...(actually I don't live or breath, seeing as I'm dead)

[David Duff]

No, no, no, no! I'm 'Deafy' Duffer, remember? We were inseperable as kids 'cos you couldn't see, and I couldn't hear. What fun we had! Remember that time I walked you along Blackpool pier and didn't tell you where it ended? Talk about laff! And then you got your own back when we playing on those new-fangled rail tracks and I didn't hear the steam train coming.
PS: I think I might be dead, too, but it's difficult to be sure.

(For readers totally bewildered by this exchange, go the comments here:

http://rullsenbergrules.blogspot.com/2006/03/quality-tv.html#comments

and then go to the (mad)man himself, here:

http://theblindwinger.blogspot.com/

I don't know who he is but he's a comic genius!)

[genghis]

The march was the statement, not the loonie-tunes who screeched and gargled!

If I could have been there, I would have marched alongside the many, in reflection of, amongst many thousands more, a now-dead father who served throughout WW2, and a favourite uncle who perished in July 1944!

[Lawrence Duff]

With the crowd behind you and all those placards I'm reminded of the legendary "You're all individuals" scene. Now where is it, ah yes...

http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-19.htm

Son of Duff

[David Duff]

Oh God! I haven't laughed so much in one day for ages. First that loon, 'Blind Winger Jones' (see post above), and now that excerpt from 'Life of Brian', a film from which I almost had to be carried, I was in such fits of laughter. Thanks, Lawrence, and thanks also from a grateful public for the wonderful picture of your intrepid reporter at the front line!

[Will]

"'i' before 'e' except after 'c'

Alec (Rather be smart than pompous)

PS Para 2, line 2"

errrr, except when there are exceptions to the rule.

I went to this exhibition on the same day David. I recommend.

http://www.proud.co.uk/exhibitions/listing/index.cfm?exhib=28

[Hank_]

David

At least you dressed for the weather.

Judging from what I hear about demo’s this is often a problem. Also the continuous reminders that if you go to a march ladies should not wear high heels.

The one time I went to a demonstration the speeches were kind of boring but watching the crowd was fun. Most were family people who brought the kids, but the wierdo’s were weird if tame.

[N.I.B.]

That's odd - I imagined you as a moustache man.

[David Duff]

The moustache?! Good God, no, I only wear that at home!

[sonic]

At normal demonstrations there are so many people to meet and things to see we rarely listen to the speeches.

Neither of course was true of the Lillipution march you are referring to so I suppose you had no choice though.

[David Duff]

"People to meet"!!!!! None of my friends would be caught dead within five miles of a demo and jolly sensible they are too! There were roughly 300 bores down there not counting the bores on the platform, and you want *more*! My dear chap, I can't help feeling that your social life is - how can I put this kindly? - less than full and fascinating, perhaps. Have you ever thought of taking up golf or something?

[sonic]

Golf? please.

I prefer boating, preferably fishing but a nice sail is also pleasant. Even a sold Sea Kayak on a good day gets one out on the water.

Otherwise a simple trip to the beach, with a good book and good bottle of wine.

[David Duff]

Actually, I quite agree with you about golf. I always tell people that at 66 I'm not old enough. Not so sure about boating - there always appears to be an awful lot of water and not much me! The sort of boating I like is when you can sit on that flat deck at the back (stern?) with a dry martini in one hand and the ability to reach over the rail and touch the dock with the other. Very nice, that is!

[Planeshift]

True veterans of demos know that when the speeches start, its time to go to the pub.

Let this be a lesson for you.

[David Duff]

NOW he tells me!

[Hilary Wade]

Has any other reader of this blog noticed the uncanny facial resemblence between a well-loved but curmudgeonly British institution, given to strong liquor and administering the odd clout to upstart youth, and Grandma Giles? Are they in any way related? I think we should be told

[David Duff]

Hilary, welcome back but who on earth do you mean?

[N.I.B.]

I loved those books when I were a lad!
http://giles.clickhere2.net/family.htm

[Andy M]

David, I fear I may have steered you wrong about Maryam Namazie. She actually spoke first, so I didn't see her speech. I guess you did, as your running order seems correct. But the really boring one, who seemed to have turned up to the wrong demo, was one Sayyida Rend Shakir al-Hadithi. That, at any rate, is the one Saul and I were talking about in the pub as we were picking out the bits of broken glass that we had rubbed into our eyes for amusement during her speech.

Pity you missed Labi Siffre, though. He was good.