After the protest

 It was on a park bench I found him. His placard, bent slightly in the shaft lay a few feet away, as if tossed aside, and his head was cradled in his hands. The picture on it was of a syringe with a red cross through it. Hunched, broken, face streaked with grime where the tears had run.

"It hurts" he said. I asked him what did. He soundlessly held out his phone. There was a tweet bemoaning the number of arrests at that day's demonstration. The tweet said that if it had been a BLM demonstration, they wouldn't have arrested anybody. I took a tactful step backwards.

"Don't feel bad" I said. I'd never seen him like this before. Peter had thrown himself cheerfully into every march he could for as long as I'd known him. Ever since the Poll Tax riots. It was his hobby. He marched both for and against the Iraq War, on the climate change protests before nipping into a bus shelter to get changed and join the counter protests. He'd dressed as a huntsman for the Counttryside Alliance one and in a big Fox costume on the anti-hunt march. He bloody loved a protest, did Pete. 

"I don't think that's terribly accurate". The tweet was from one of those people who've appeared over the last few years. the ones who don't seem to have an actual job other than to go onto Question Time and be angry. "Weren't you on that BLM protest anyway? There were loads arrested."

He brightened "yeah, pulled down that statue of that bloke". I didn't have the heart to tell him it was a piece of public art I didn't like, so I'd told him it was a slave trader. The council have put flowerbeds in since, much nicer. Then he frowned. "But it still hurts. 60? Is that it?" He measured the success of the protests by how many people got arrested, and kept the scores in a big book by his bed. After Extinction Rebellion he'd been whistling for weeks. 

"I'll be honest" I said. "I don't think they were taking this one seriously." It was true. I normally kept Pete company on his protests, it kills a bit of time and it always cheers me up to see people who are so definite about things. I don't really give a monkey's about anything, personally, so it adds a little structure to the day. Plus, there's always the chance of a spot of aggro, I keep out of it myself, but it's always good to have a ringside seat, so to speak.

This one though, the anti-lockdown one, mixed with some anti-vaxxers and some of that weirdo QAnon lot, had felt different. The Police could hardly keep from laughing. When they arrested people I think it was more to keep their hand in, sort of thing. The protestors hadn't been quite up to scratch, neither. Most looked like they needed a good feed, lots of basement-dwelling lonely-bloke types and a smattering of posh Mums who get their advice on vaccines from Facebook. The whole thing was a bit of a let-down. It's hard to feel like you're at the cutting edge of protest when you're marching next to some woman from Fulham called Saskia. 

"Look" I said gently "you've been spoiled this year, there've been some belters. This one, well, it just wasn't meant to be. Cheer up. Imagine when Brexit goes tits up next year, that's going to be mental."

He brightened. "You're right" he said "four figures at least."

"That's the spirit" I said, and watched, relieved, as Pete stood up and retrieved his sign, spotting a bin down by the pond he strode off to put this protest behind him.

"Come on" he shouted over his shoulder "Nando's is still doing takeout." I wandered off after him, it's an hour, isn't it? As good a reason as anny.