A yokel comes to town
Jeremy Clarke
Iwent on the Countryside March in my capacity as vice-chairman of the South West Terrier, Lurcher, Ferret and Family Dog club and on a more personal note because I think it is supremely un-English for a government to try to make us good by an Act of Parliament. On the march I wore a red England shirt, which I also wore to the party I went to the night before.
The party was a very up-market party on the roof-top terrace of a large house in Kensington. Everyone there was clever, barristers mostly, and beautifully dressed. Our host, for example, wore an iridescent two-tone double-breasted suit. There was quiche and bite-sized sausages to eat and plenty of champagne chilling in the Smeg fridge. The conversation was bright, witty and ill-informed. In my England shirt I felt like the hick up from the country that I was. When I said I was up from Devon to represent a dog and ferret club on the Countryside March, they thought I was making a joke.
About midnight it got quite chilly, and the actress I was talking to went inside to look in our host's wardrobe for something warm to put on. She came back flourishing this short PVC dress with large buckles on it — fetish gear for games in the bedroom. She'd discovered it on a hanger in the wardrobe and returned to tease our host with it. Everyone cheered at the sight of it. Personally, I thought what a lovely little dress it was, one I wouldn't have minded wearing myself given the right circumstances. But our host, hitherto impeccably genial and self-deprecating, suffered a massive sense of humour failure. He was so embarrassed, and then angry. he told us all to leave, which we did, rather sheepishly.
We were still laughing about it the following morning as we queued to join the Livelihood section of the march, which, judging from the accents, seemed to corn prise the whole of Norfolk. It wasn't all landed gentry down for the day either, as that evening's Channel 4 News suggested. I must have seen at least half a dozen men who were definitely working-class. In Northumberland Avenue, for example, I passed a man with an earring, a tattoo and a Lakeland terrier. He was holding aloft a placard that simply said, 'Ban Bans'. The Lakeland was trotting along as if it was all the same to him whether he was protesting in central London or out foxing.
The atmosphere was more like that of a village fete than a political protest. I was dearly hoping to get the chance to throw a few cobbles at the windows of Downing Street at some stage, but one glance at my fellow marchers told me that this was going to be entirely out of the question. I marched alone and at the double where possible. I'd been going well for about an hour when I reached what I thought must be the finish, but was in fact the starting line.
The finish was in Whitehall, where heads were counted by an elderly man standing on a platform. (Another elderly man on a platform was telling people to remove their hats as they passed the Cenotaph.) A young lad also had 'Official Counter' written on his tabard, but he was leaning against a lamppost eating a pork pie. 'Shouldn't you be counting?' I said as I passed him. He tried to answer me, but his mouth was too full of pork pie for him to speak coherently.
An electronic display on the finishing gantry gave the number of those passing beneath it so far. At the end of the day, the Countryside Alliance put the final muster of perverts and criminals at 407,791. This is an exaggeration, because I went round twice. After I'd finished I met friends and went round again with them. So the real number is one less. (The only countryside Mick and Suzanne ever get to see, incidentally, is in France, but they are among those enlightened souls who say, 'I don't like what you do, but I'd defend your right to do it'.) I encountered only one vociferous 'anti' all day. At the finish an old man with a kind face and an arm in a sling leant over the police barrier beside the Houses of Parliament and said to me. 'Shame on the hunters; jolly good luck to everyone else.' I thanked him.
The Livelihood march finished on the south bank of Westminster Bridge. Momentum carried us on, however, as far as the Tate Modern, which was full of country folk. On the fifth floor I joined a group of mauve-faced farmers in front of a video screen. On the screen a fat man, naked except for a mask and boxing gloves, was smearing brown sauce between his legs and alternately masturbating and punching himself in the head. The farmers watched impassively for quite a long while. Then one turned to the other and said in a broad Norfolk accent, 'What time did you say our coach leaves, Tom?'
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