St George

 The demo, if you could call it that, was sparsely attended. From the doorway of the vape shop Crespo watched critically. He'd sold some Cherry Bomb Nirvana to a student a couple of hours ago but business was, by any stretch, slow.

His friend, Talkative Steve, so named for his generally taciturn habit had come down to the shop to, if not chat so much, at least hang around and be out of the house for a bit. he didn't have a lot else on that day. Crespo indicated the two young men handing out leaflets by the Clock Tower.

"The state of that." Steve didn't reply, which wasn't much of a surprise. They watched the two lads, early twenties by the look of them, fairly close-cropped hair, as they proffered leaflets to the few Saturday shoppers who'd braved the drizzle. There weren't many takers. A copper and a PCSO kept an eye on things from just outside Starbucks, close enough to get the benefit of the heating when the door opened.

"I mean, English Defence Association? Defence against what? Hair gel? Tailoring?" Crespo was, by habit, a fairly smart dresser, just because it's only a vape shop, he always said, is no reason not to make an effort. Today he had on three-piece blue linen suit with a startling pink lining, the jacket of which hung behind the till. He was taking the demonstrator's combination of green bomber jackets, blue jeans and white trainers as something of a personal insult.

"Not much of a turnout. Even the Lib Dems got more than this."

"WI next week." Said Steve. "Be busier then."

Their banner hung limply in the damp air, and the St George's Crosses on each side were looking increasingly bedraggled. Growing frustrated at the lack of takers the two lads were moving further and further from their trestle table, trying to intercept shoppers, who were taking increasingly large swerves to avoid them, before long they'd cleared a circle about thirty metres across. Crespo watched, fascinated. A little lad ducked into the circle and wandered over to the table and started chatting to one of them, grinning and nodding along. Finally he wrote something on a sheet of paper and walked away, Crespo noted that he was giving a thumbs up to a group of kids in hoodies hanging around outside Gregg's

"I mean, who are they demonstrating against, exactly? This town's whiter than Windermere. There's only Sandeep in the Post Office and that's about it." 

"Don't think they mean here, specifically" said Steve "more, sort of general, I imagine." Then, with the distracted air of someone who's got nothing better to do he strolled to the trestle table and picked up a leaflet, wandering back to the shop straight past the two surprised racists, who were too taken aback by this turn of events to engage him in any of their pre-prepared rhetoric about the Great Replacement of the White Race, which was probably just as well.

The two friends read through the leaflet in silence. It detailed how they, the English Defence Association were fighting the destruction of the English way of life, assailed as it was on all sides by woke left snowflakes and "The Muslims". They referred to themselves as the "Thin White Line", which, given the circumference of the young men, struck Crespo as decidedly less than a propos. 

There was quite a bit in there about supporting the Israeli state, which cheerfully contradicted another section about how the Rothschilds were behind the banking crisis and George Soros was funding the "elitist BBC".  There was a vague section about fighting paedophiles and the Deep State, which were apparently one and the same. The words "blood" and "heritage" did quite a lot of work. All told it covered a lot of ground in a couple of pages of photocopied black and white A5.

Finally, decisively, Steve scrunched the leaflet into a ball and meandered casually back toward the trestle table, where he dropped the crumpled ball next to a pile of unsold St George's cross hoodies and a sign up sheet which, he noted, had three signatures, all of whom, he suspected, were taking the piss. That they'd signed their names as Mo Salah, Bobby Firmino and  Hugh G Dick was something of a giveaway.

The two racists eyed him warily, they were aware that this disrespect brooked some sort of a response, but Steve's air of general unaffectedness was slightly unnerving, plus he was about a foot taller than either of them. The police presence edged half a yard further from Starbucks. Finally Steve spoke, not unkindly.

"St George was from Palestine, lads." He smiled briefly, and walked away. Returning to the vape shop he decided to treat himself to 30ml of Buttered Popcorn. it looked like it was going to rain a bit more heavily, so there was no point going home just yet.