“Everyone’s heard it before,” said Old Pete. “But it’s a blinder of a joke, isn’t it?”
“A classic. Same again?”
“Cheers,” said Old Pete.
“But surely…” said Norman. “I mean, you have… I mean…”
“What?”
Norman Hartnell shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll figure that out, given time.”
“Amber bottle tops,” said Neville.
“Sorry?” said Norman.
“Amber bottle tops this week, red last week, green the week before.”
“Oh yes,” said Norman. “Amber this week. Don’t serve anything else, will you?”
“I am a professional,” said Neville. “Do I have to keep on telling you? And what would happen if I did make a mistake? It would hardly be the end of the world, would it?”
Norman did not reply.
The big brass band played the theme tune from Blue Peter. The world-famous Brentford Girls’ School Drum Majorettes high-stepped and baton-twirled; carnival floats manned and womanned by Brentfordians who had actually spent their Millennium grant money on what they said they would followed behind.
These fine-looking floats were constructed to display tableaux from Brentford’s glorious past.
Here was a great and garish Julius Caesar, fashioned from papier mache, dipping his toe in the Thames, prior to crossing it down by Horseferry Lane. Here were the king’s men, ready to hammer the parliamentarians at the historic Battle of Brentford. Here too the Bards of Brentford, the poets and playwrights, the literary greats, born to the borough and now beloved the world over.
And there was, well, there was – er…
Moving right along, here come the all-ladies over-eighties synchronized paragliding team.
And the band played “Believe It If You Like”.
30
Tour trucks rolled into Brentford. Mostly Bedford vans they were, all knocked and knackered about. They had the names of the bands who travelled within them spray-painted on the sides. There were also one or two of those VW campers. You know the ones, the old lads with the two-tone orange and cream colouring. The ones that German terrorists always drive in movies that have German terrorists in them. Have you ever noticed that? It’s always two-tone VW campers. And if that’s not a tradition or an old charter, or something, then gawd knows what it is.
Hollywood again, probably.
A big bad black Bedford van drew up outside the football ground and a man with considerable hair, considerable piercings, considerable tattoos and a bulge in his leather pants which merited considerable consideration stepped down from it.
He flexed his arms, which did not have particularly considerable muscles on them, and cried out to the groundsman who was lounging outside smoking a cigarette.
“We are the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death,” he cried out. “And we have come for your daughters. Those we can’t screw, we eat.”
“It’s a shame Jim couldn’t get the Spice Girls,” said the groundsman. “Park your old van round the back, mate. There’s booze laid on in the bar.”
A two-tone VW camper pulled up behind. It was driven by an Aryan type in a roll-neck sweater and denim cap. His name was Axel and he was a member of an organization known as the Black Umbrella Militant Faction Underground Communist Killers. Which was the kind of acronym that didn’t bear thinking about.
“You round the back too, mate,” called out the groundsman. “Park in the bay marked Terrorists.”
The big parade kept on parading by and a carnival atmosphere was beginning to grow. Jim and John had splashed out on vast quantities of bunting and balloons to decorate the streets and the town looked a treat. And what with there being a free rock concert in the evening, and the free beer festival all day and night, and the free fireworks sometime later on, the numbers were swelling, as out-borough types arrived to lend their heartfelt support. There was even a hippie convoy on the way, with a chap called Bollocks driving the lead bus.
It certainly looked like being a night to remember.
At the Hartnell Millennial Brewery (two lock-up garages knocked into one, near the clapped-out trading estate down by the old docks), Norman tinkered happily away at his mobile de-entropizer.
It was constructed mainly from Meccano and mounted upon pram wheels. There was a conveyor belt running through it and the general principle was that you put the item you wanted de-entropized in at one end and it came out of the other – well, de-entropized.
Of course there was no end to the complications of gubbinry crammed inside. Lots of old valve-radio parts, whirring cogs and clicking mechanisms, all beavering away at the ionization of beta particles, thus creating a positronic catalyst, which bombarded an isotope with gamma radiation, giving rise to galvanic variations and the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter.
The way these things do.
Norman twiddled with his screwdriver and whistled an old Cannibal Corpse number. He set the dial to repeat, placed a long-defunct penny banger onto the conveyor belt, watched it pass into the de-entropizer and smiled hugely as, one after another, bright new reconstituted clones of the former firework poured out of the other end.
“I must get around to patenting this,” said Norman Hartnell.
By eight o’clock the Road to Calvary was – filling nicely. The beer festival proper was in a big marquee in the Memorial Park. On the very spot, in fact, where the John Omally Millennial Bowling Green had been planned. And beneath the very tree where Jim had done his travelling in time. But what the marquee didn’t have, but the Swan did, was Hartnell’s Millennial Ale.
“Another bottle, Neville, please,” said Old Pete, as he stood at the bar chatting with an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman.
“You were saying,” said the Scotsman, “about your family.”
“Oh yes,” said Old Pete. “I come from a very musical family. Even the dog hummed in the warm weather.”
“How interesting,” said the Englishman.
“Oh yes, very musical. When I was only three I played on the linoleum. We had a flood and my mum floated out on the table. I accompanied her on the piano. Talking of pianos, the cat sat down at ours once and played a tune, and my mum said, ‘We must get that orchestrated,’ and the cat ran out and we never saw it again. Now my father, my father died from music on the brain. A piano fell on his head.”
“Was that the same piano?” asked the Irishman.
“Same one,” said Old Pete. “I never played it myself. I was going to learn the harp, but I didn’t have the pluck.”
“Might I just stop you there?” asked the Scotsman.
“And I was thinking of becoming a homosexual,” said Old Pete. “But I was only half in earnest.”
“I really must stop you there,” said the Scotsman.
“Oh yes, and why?”
“Because you’re telling such shite jokes.”
“Here, look at that,” said Old Pete, pointing to a nun riding by on a jester’s back. “Is that vergin’ on the ridiculous, or what?”
Omally pushed his way up to the bar. “Has Jim been in, Neville?” he asked.
