“Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.” *

One of the problems of dating in Brighton - if you hold what some might classify as right-wing views - is that your potential date will be, with a 90% level of certainty, a virtue-signalling leftie. You're stuck with a choice - to stay quiet and fail gracefully to get sex or to reveal your politics and be damn certain not to.

Saying you voted Brexit perhaps, or admire Nigel Farage, is literally like turning up to the wine bar dressed in full Gestapo uniform with a copy of The Final Solution in your top pocket. There again... The hard left these days seem to love a bit of anti-semitism. Can't get enough of it.

Saying you support low taxes, a small state, free trade and capitalism is usually - and disingenuously - met with hysterical guilt-by-association accusations. That's because, to a leftie, holding a few non leftie views means you must subscribe to a whole set of others too. So, I say, Brexit for democratic reasons, they say racist; I say low taxes and they say I want to burn the poor. Maybe piss on them first.

Therefore, on a date, it's easier to take the cowardly, pragmatic approach. When your leftie date jabbers on about some social justice outrage de jour, just smile and take the conversation off at a tangent. Lefties generally - and especially in their natural environment within Brighton - tend not to meet people who disagree with them out loud. Silence is taken as assent. So she'll not spot the evasion but will take the change of subject as affirmation of her point of view - a point so obvious it should be, like, the law or something. The science is settled, the debate is over, the platform is not open, safe spaces are not going to be invaded.

It's a bit like Facebook (of which I'm not longer a member). The busy grasshoppers chirp noisily all over the timeline whilst the bovine Brexit / Tory supporting multitudes stay suspiciously quiet. Hence the outrage when these special snowflakes actually lose (see my article on 1992 election and the narcism of the self-righteous). They literally cannot comprehend it. Everyone agrees with them.

But - Edmund Burke fans - in looney-tunes Brighton, the fucking grasshoppers are in charge of the town and rigidly boss the poor cows about.

Does that mean I'm a cow? Hell no, I'm a bull me. El torre! Just a rather quiet one.

So where does that leave the nominal right-winger (libertarian actually, thanks) in his quest to bed the leftie date? Well, about in the same position as with a right wing date. Or a liberal date. Or a date with woman of no political views.

Politics, I've found, aren't actually the primary driver in the dating scene. Other, more corporeal attributes, claim that sovereignty.

It's possible I may return to this subject.

Tim

* A rather good, and prescient quote from Edmund Burke. Beware the mob!