Last Thursday night I went to a meeting of the local Marxists at the university. Like everyone (tho some would never admit it) I am a confused muddle of left and right and middle and extremes and thoughts that are off any chart - and somehow I have to make sense of this mess and try to convert it into one cross on a piece of paper, one spot on the left-to-right political spectrum - and overall I'd say that I am much more left than right. I rejoined the Labour party recently, voted for Jeremy Corbyn, and still feel largely optimistic.
In my idle 3am moments of waking dreams, my ideal party would be somewhere between (& including) Tony Blair and Joseph Stalin. Unusually for a lefty, I actually like History's winners. Last Thursday night it all came back to me - the horror of being among history's losers. If it wasn't for the mobile phones and the fact that almost everyone looked like they'd just walked out of a very expensive fashion shoot, it could have been 1983 all over again.
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It was identical to an early-1980s Labour Party (with Militant) meeting - a few beautiful young women who said nothing, a few young men spouting cliches a la Dave Spart (a trite & easy accusation, but true), and a couple of old geezers tearfully remembering the good old days. I was genuinely surprised to hear the same old Messianic predictions that the Revolution is just around the corner. Predictions that the working class would unite and go on a general strike.
There was no feeling of unity inside that miserable cold quiet hostile little room - how could these quiet nervous disunited people possibly go out and inspire tens of millions of people to unite and go on strike ? Truly, I am on their side. But if they want to win, then they have to do some winning, and they have to be winning - to be appealing.
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It's been about thirty years since I last attended such a small intense political meeting, and I nearly roared out loud with laughter when some old geezer said he felt that the Revolution is very close indeed. Those 30 years just vanished - nothing has changed on the hard left. And the hard left has changed nothing.
Have these people never travelled by train - have they never felt that same cold disunited slightly hostile feeling that you get in any British railway carriage full of miserable docile obedient cunts going to and from work so they can sustain their crap life of living in a shithole - look out the windows at the shitty places people obediently live in.
ooo
Fuck, if there's going to be a Revolution in Britain it would've happened by now. But it feels more and more distant. It felt like a slight possibility in the 1970s. Less of a possibility in the 1980s - though the miners' strike wobbled things for a while. And a total impossibility in the 2010s. The only revolution anyone will ever experience is the one they create inside their own life - e.g. a vow to buy less crap, almost never buy new crap, to stop dressing like rich fashion models when going to Marxist discussion groups.
During the nearly-six-months since my wife died I have put myself about a bit and have made about thirty really good new friends. About 28 of them are male and sadly only a couple are female. I'm sorry to be so un-PC but speaking purely from my own personal honest experience, men seem to be so open and friendly and easy, and women are much more likely to be guarded and cautious. This is odd - because all through my life my very closest friends have always been (and still are) women.
There are exceptions of course - but generally my observation feels (to me) to be about as true as saying that men tend to be taller than women. Again - there are exceptions. Amy Johnson, Amelia Earhart, my own favourite mountaineer of all time Alison Hargreaves .... there have been many adventurous brave women.
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But the sad sigh I hear from so many men is Where are the women who aren't trapped ? who aren't overladen with so much baggage ? The photograph is me and one of my most recent new male friends, Wesley. We're standing on Lepe beach, about a week-plus ago. Wesley stayed here for four days. He's Brazilian. He sold all his possessions and bought a bicycle and the various things he'd need to cycle around the world. Everything he owns is now either on his back or on his bike.
People might think he is extremely poor now. I think he has become extremely rich. People will think of their own little house and their little garden, and all the possessions contained within - and be proud to own these things. They'll look over their fence and see all the land that isn't theirs. But Wesley owns the whole planet. Wesley can go north, south, north-north-east, anywhere.
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No few square feet of the planet are any more or less his than any other few square feet. Wesley is very friendly, very talkative, very open - people come up to him, get chatting - and pretty much every day he gets offered somewhere to stay. He is acquiring more and more phone numbers and email addresses of people who have told him that if he's got any problems he can contact them and they'll come running.
His friends aren't limited to the names written down on a Christmas card list - they're the 99% of the world's population who are fundamentally okay really. Sorry to come over a bit hippy-dippy - but maybe we all go a bit soft in the head in the end. Perhaps mind-bogglingly to cynics such as myself, he says that he finds the British one of the friendliest nations on the planet. I was very sad when it was time for Wesley to go. I tried to lift his fully-laden bike. I'm a strong guy, and could barely do it.
He wobbled unsteadily from one side of the road to the other for a few tens of yards till he got up enough speed to control his bike, and then he was off. He was heading towards Dorchester. I swear I'm not making this up - he was heading off to stay with a gorgeous trans-sexual there - man to woman. Wesley will see stranger sights than any of us can possibly imagine. And perhaps in Dorchester he will find the dream partner that all us slightly disappointed single men crave - a man's brain inside a beautiful woman's body.
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