Socialist Berserker.

Decided for no particular reason to sally forth today, to check out this thing called BristolHarbourfest. I found myself in town; I found myself  jostling and barging my way through  Nuremberg size crowds - not as strategically placed as the latter gathering - although in some areas stages of various sizes had been erected whereby earnest people played pale music on acoustic guitars and sang songs about falling in love on a barge in Cambridgeshire. The audience, little islands of tipsy bonhomie, sat crossed legged or lolled or stood or not. I saw one fellow in a curious repose of right angles, his face pushed up hard against a horse chestnut tree, an eclectic  loam of beer cans and wine bottles lay around bearing witness to his piss up.
I wandered off in search of, nothing really. I hate festivals of any stripe. I hate the collective spirit of good will, a sort of Woodstock (very) lite, an idealistic hope pervades that the next band will be The Fucking Levellers or their kin.     I hate the food and the trinkets and the trinket sellers - over priced tat they've imported from some far Eastern hellhole for a pittance - life's cheap and then you die. Never trust a hippie or someone who makes a living form selling lentil concoctions, and green tea - surely the devils tears.
Anyway I'm digressing here. The Socialist Worker! We've all seen them, standing outside PoundStretcher of an afternoon clutching their propaganda rag (circulation 11) Serious middle aged anoracked men with glasses and soft hands. Who, seriously, would announce to a prospective girlfriend (Socialists are exclusively men) or anyone for that matter that they were a Socialist. Personally if I had a choice I'd rather announce I was a Christian or I heard voices  that made me do "things." Which is one and the same really. It's a totally redundant ideology.
One of their number stopped me and asked if I'd sign his petition. The Socialists you see have a bee in their berets about that chap in Norway who happened to run amok with serious weaponry. They think there's some kind of far right conspiracy that's going to engulf us all in riots and race war, in tears and hatred, in Swastikas and re-runs of Till Death Do Us Part.We simply don't have a history of dalliances with far left or right movements, unlike the French or the Spanish or the Germans  I'll admit there are far right groups  in this country but they're totally inconsequential, and well, silly - just like their Socialist opponents at the other end of the spectrum. Believe, in their Socialist demi-heaven I would probably be the first up against the wall and then you and you...Politics suck!
I didn't sign his conspiracy petition - I noticed he only had 4 signatures- I stared at it, I stared a bit more and said with my head held high and in a clear voice: "I can't sign this!" His demeanor changed from informal informative to mildly challenging and intimidatory. "Why not!" he demanded, again I paused trying to muster up an intelligent and witty reposte, his question hung in the air like a dispatched counter revolutionary...
  " I haven't got my reading glasses on.." I didn't have the wherewithal to carry on with this fundamentalist, or even the interest really. Your an extremist I thought and it doesn't matter what I say, if you had a gun and come the glorious revolution - you'd shoot me anyway. I thank you comrade.
He laughed at this, possibly sensing I may sign and just to be sure he proceeded to read out his wonky manifesto, the finer points of the Socialist agenda and other scaremongering tactics. I noticed some wit had signed himself as Lennon ( get it?)
Just then Citizen Smiths phone parped into life and I made my escape and rejoined the prolatarian Utopia.
We don't need left and we don't need right, what we need a is a revolution of the mind.
Hiel Hitler, only joking!