Discombobulation, awkwardness, the throng of the crowd, and a terminally annoying interloper. There’s a random guy on a march no-one wants to talk to. He streams in from nowhere (possibly drunk) and doesn’t know what’s going on or why he’s there. He’s the embodiment of the universal asshole asking stupid questions and contributing nothing. “On all sides folk were walking past. They moved quickly. Some were coming so close I felt a draught from their body, going to bang into me. Somebody said, The army are there and they are waiting for us. I shouted, I beg yer pardon! Take yer hand off my arm, cried a man.” He likes to annoy women taking part too. He can’t stop butting in. He’s creepy and ineffectual, hassling people, pulling at elbows. “I could see another couple of people looking at me; they too were suspicious. I shook my head at them, as if I was just seeing them for the first time.” In the end he does what all goons do and follows the tribe into whatever strange hell looms.
First published in The Stinging Fly, Issue 12, Volume 2 and also collected in The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story, ed. Philip Hensher, Penguin, 2019
A Personal Anthology 