My girlfriend was in the centre of Bath (a quaint Georgian tourist city in South-west England, where we live) with her dad last night, and they came across a crowd apparently celebrating the news that the British were pulling out of Iraq.
They got talking to some of the group, who seemed to think that most if not all of the British troops in Basra were on there way home at that very moment. My girlfriend's dad, who is 78 and pretty ambivalent on the war, politely informed some of the protesters that they were getting a little ahead of themselves, as a large British contingent would be based outside Basra for some time to come. This inoffensive and correct observation was too much for one of the protesters, who accused him of being a Bush supporter in colourful terms, before telling my girlfriend to "take the old f**k home". My girlfriend remonstrated with the protester, but he kept on swearing, so she and her dad left.
A little further on they ran into a woman who was on her way to join the protest and was handing out leaflets, and my girlfriend got talking to her (she likes talking to people). The woman was holding forth on the "sanctity of all human life" when she was interrupted by a homeless man asking my girlfriend for a cigarette. "That's the trouble with Bath," the woman muttered, "they allow scum like that to live on the streets".
That's the anti-war crowd for you in a nutshell: snobs and yobs.
2 comments:
Bath's not changed all that much then?
The Green Tree's still adecent pub though I hope?
Tim, the Green Tree is still small but perfectly formed. Big fan of your blog and will be linking.
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