A Dress Code for Anarchists

If you have been given the impression that Lady P-G is a force with which to be reckoned, it is as nothing to finding yourself on the receiving end of the disapproval of your stalwart Pedant-General's mother - the venerable Dowager Duchess of Custard and Artichoke.

Yesterday morning, I chanced to speak to her on the telephone - an instrument that she has only recently had installed (partly because she does not need it for local calls) and still treats with a heady cocktail of contempt, suspicion and fear - and the topic of the various protests in Edinburgh could hardly be avoided.

As is her wont, she asked the pertinent question:

"If one is an anarchist and wants to disrupt things, why would one dress in black and not wash and generally mark oneself out as a trouble maker? Wouldn't they be better to hide amongst the crowds until the right moment to pop out and lob a brick as they pass Starbucks?"

I think she may have hit upon something here. Ought we to add anarchists to the ranks of spies and private detectives in that they have to confront a frightful dilemma every morning in deciding how to dress? But then I suppose that being an anarchist does not correlate well with top quartile intelligence. Let us just be grateful that the Wombles et al do not have her organisational skills. Sorry. That is an obvious oxymoron. Anarchists and Organisation. Silly me.

And there was more:

"And I saw that George Monbiot on the television this morning. He seemed jolly steamed up. Almost frothing at the mouth."

she fulminated and then dropped her bombshell:

"His eyes were going round and round."

So there we have it: a bona fide "swivel-eyed lunatic". Hurrah!