Bozmag #6

Bozmag #5

Bozmag #4

Bozmag #3

Bozmag #2

Bozmag #1

Pons Aelius

Pax Romana?

It was a fresh spring morning when one of the sentries in the fort first noticed something glinting on a far hill to the north.

            “Cave! Timere!”

            “Barbarians!” He pointed frantically towards the northern horizon where over the whole hillside, several hillsides, arms and armour were glittering in the early sunlight. The centurion dashed towards the principia, shouting. NCOs emerged from their quarters and began shouting. The praefectus was shouting from the front doorway of his villa whilst he struggled into a cuirass that he had obviously outgrown.

            “Where’s my gladius? Someone get me a gladius.”

            The caligati, the army’s rankers or grunts, stumbled onto the parade ground in their underwear. They did not shout, but muttered amongst themselves.

            “Stand to!” The vexillarius planted the regiment’s banner firmly alongside his commander. A cornicen began to blast out the strident Call to Arms, but there was an impossibly short space of time between the alarm being raised and the arrival of a crazed hoard of Picts and Geordies at the settlement, wielding an assortment of dangerously sharp-edged implements. It was a hectic time, a panic stricken scrabbling for war gear time, too short a time for the completion of defensive preparations. Battlements were manned by half ready troops, torsion ballistas loaded with iron tipped bolts, Palmyran archers crowded onto the roof of the gatehouse. Fire-buckets were filled and someone was dispatched to find Marcus, the nearest thing they had to a field surgeon. The doomed lad was pierced through with a broad, leaf-bladed Pictish spear before he had crossed the street, and was trampled under foot as a tightly packed mass of barbarians crashed, screaming into the vicus, firing the buildings and slaughtering all before them.

            Terrifying, fair skinned, naked warriors, unstoppable in their blood-rage, led the assault on the fort. Ornate bronze helmets and gold torques flashed fire. Long iron swords slashed against soldiers’ scuta, gaudy lozenge shields, like outsize knuckle-dusters, battered into soft tissue. Roman blood spattered onto blue painted, barbarian flesh, and soaked darkly into their woollen plaid short capes and long trousers, stained the ground crimson. Individual screams melded into a homogeneous roar of pain, and greedy ravens gathered in expectation of the carnage.

            By the time a relief column of the Cohors I Tungrorum arrived from Vercovicium fort the barbarians had moved on. The would-be rescuers found a butchers’ shambles. Large areas of charred earth and rubble stretched back from the roadsides. No identifiable building stood above ground except the burned out shell of the hostelry and the wreck of the principia. Tatters of clothing and flesh hung in the gorse, picked over by ominous black birds. Smoke rose still, from the smouldering peat.

            First Tungrorum also had a medicus ordinaries, with the unlikely name of Anicius Ingenuus. He had accompanied the auxiliary column in the hopes of tending to the wounded, but there was no work for him. Nothing lived. If there had been survivors these too had long since dispersed.

Queenie

Over time the community around the staging post grew, and despite changes to the garrison Marcus stayed on. He even managed to extend the range of his medical skills. He could not admit it to any of the Romanised military units, but he had picked up a few tips from the local, somewhat eccentric, wise woman and had a notebook full of plant drawings and descriptions of their efficacy.
Soon after yet another change of personnel at the fort Marcus entered the local alehouse. He preferred the tepid malt brew drunk by the sturdy natives to the fort’s cheap wine that had joggled all its way up the Great North Street from Portus Dubris, especially when the ale was fortified with a dram of the amber distillation that the locals knew as chwisgi.
     “A pot of your finest brew, fair lass, and a chwisgi chaser if you would be so kind. The barmaid was new to him, slender with wild hair as had black as a raven’s chuff and haunting, sad eyes.
     “Owt to eat with that, your ‘ighness? We got toast and dripping on the go.”
She was not local, drawing out her A’s and dropping her H’s.
     “I can’t think of anything finer. Two thick slices please. You’re not from round here? I’m Marcus.”
She turned and shouted through to the back:
     “Two mucky fats. Door stops, for this ‘ere gent.
     “Nah, I come up with the army, part of some legion or other, from Londinium. Names Queenie.” She wiped a hand on the front of her skirts and held it out, “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.” She glanced down at his army issue tunic worn over woollen tartan trousers, “You that Medicus I been ‘earing about? Yer not really a Briton?”
     Yes he was Marcus the Medicus and no he was not a native Briton. Though he had been in the army so long he could barely remember his homeland.
     “Long story. I’ll be over by the fire when that toast is done.”
As the seasons passed and the monotonous routines of Army life behind the walls of the castra followed one on another, as ever plodding, unchanging through a mundane eternity an intimate relationship developed between Marcus and his barmaid in the cosy native alehouse. He moved his surgery into the Snug and from the pub’s doorway he could see straight through the gateway of the fort where soldiers on Sick Call would line up at six o’clock each morning and march across the street for his attention and a nifty pint. The couple set up home, first in a spare room in the attic, eventually in the landlord’s apartments. One winter the proprietor had contracted a terminal case of the ague and Queenie inherited the business. Now officially married they had a child, a girl, Priscilla Alastríona, indistinguishable from the other village urchins, except that her Latin was somewhat more fluent. Life, for Marcus and Queenie was proceeding along a surprisingly satisfactory path.

The Wise Woman

When the short northern summer eventually arrived the rain stopped and the sun came out. Gnats also came out, billions of gnats. They were everywhere and got into everything, everywhere that is except Marcus’ roundhouse. The thick wood smoke that pervaded the interior of every native home, generated by slow burning peat in each central hearth, kept insect numbers to a minimum. It hung in the rafters and seeped out through the thatch. It did not, however, have any effect on head lice, nor the mysterious and extremely irritating mite that had appeared to infest both army and civilian population.
     Marcus was unable to produce a cure and they were all scratching themselves raw. Tempers became frayed. Herbal medicines were not his field of expertise, but a lunatic old woman appeared uninvited from somewhere on the other side of the heath.
     “It’s Nell the Idiot Crone. Always turns up when she’s needed. You take note, young Marcus. She has the gift of healing.”
     The ragged spectre stared disconcertingly, babbled incessantly and produced a sturdy black-iron pot in which she boiled up a sticky, purple brew topped with a bilious scum. It bubbled and popped and steamed an ominous steam that crept over the sides of the pot and drifted across the floor. Indicating that all the men should gather the Idiot Nell produced a large whitewash brush and painted the concoction over their bollocks. It stung mightily. She then treated women and children. Soon the treatment had soothed the itching, and slaughtered the mites, though there was a tendency for all the patients’ hair to fall out.
     Eventually the hostelry was finished; two stories with accommodation, VIP suite, restaurant and a bar, with real wine. The little garrison fort was given a fine imitation stone gatehouse in the same plasterwork as the walls. It sported a gold painted stucco eagle and inscription above the gates. Inside, the old Head Quarters were rebuilt in stone with the basilica or cross-hall open onto a pressed clay parade ground. The Spanish Praefectus had his own house; there were wooden barracks, a mess, storage barns and a clean, warm latrine block. Just outside the fort two bathhouses were built, one for the army and one for the locals. The latter was viewed with considerable suspicion, shunned, neglected and soon fell into disrepair. There was even a tiny temple to Mithras standing alone on the edge of the highway. Before they left, the construction workers built a general store and an alehouse for the vicus. Rarely coming to the fort and generally believed to have gone native, Marcus had become known as the Little Briton to his boisterous German colleagues.

BOZMAG

Construction

Nonis Martiis uacat
missi ad hospitium cum Marco medico
faciendum structores numero xxx
ad lapidem flammandum numero xviiii
ad lutum uiminibus castrorum faciendum traces…
The next morning saw Marcus and his men lined up in front of their tents while a skinny centurion whose helmet kept slipping forwards over his eyes waved yet another of the flimsy wooden tablets at them.
     “These are your orders dated for the seventh of March and delivered to our Praefectus by the medical orderly. They are for the building of a hospitium, a roadside staging post. Stone and timber have already been delivered and are stacked up to the west of the camp. We have begun making tiles so that you will not be held up. The ground floor is to be constructed of dressed stone with a course of tiles at regular intervals. Meanwhile your carpenters can fashion the framework for an upper floor. Thirty of you, these instructions are very specific, will burn limestone for the making of lime mortar. Nineteen of you will be producing clay for the wattle fences of the camp. You will begin at once.”
Across the road from the camp was the vicus, an untidy cluster of round houses with tall, conical, thatched roofs, occupied by native hangers on, camp followers and dodgy tradesmen, an inevitable accompaniment to any Roman fort. Whilst work began on the construction of the hostelry an ox was commandeered from the locals along with a small child, the only person that could get it to perform as required. In a shallow pit it trod the local mud into a quagmire, mixing it with its own dung to make daub. This would be pressed by hand through the woven willows of wattle panels.   Wattle walls, backed by a sturdy earth rampart were to replace the palisade of the fort. Once the outer coating of daub had been smoothed, scored in imitation of stonework and whitewashed it would look impressive enough to the casual viewer. When the building work required, wattle and daub would also provide the infill between the timbers for the upper story of the hospitium.
     After barely surviving his first week in a tent Marcus did a deal with the local blacksmith and moved into one of the disgusting thatched hovels across the road from the camp. He shared it with the smith’s family, four adults whose relationship was obscure and a horde of grubby children. He also shared with an assortment of livestock, but he was warm enough to sleep through the night without waking. Each day he held a surgery for the army, but much of his time was taken up with the natives. He pulled teeth, sewed up innumerable head wounds and lanced boils. They all had boils. Mostly he was repaid with gifts of chickens that he traded with the garrison quartermaster. There had on one occasion been a duck, which he had kept. It was a good layer and the children looked after it.

Journey's End

By the time they arrived at their destination it was growing dark and drizzle had penetrated every item of clothing. On a bare patch of mud at the roadside an overgrown ditch and dilapidated palisade encompassed the sad castra. Marcus strode to the front of his men and past Hermann, who was just about to hail the guard.

            “I’ll handle this.” The auxiliary trooper on guard duty looked down from a watchtower above the gate. “We are the construction detachment. Your commander is expecting us.”

            “His eminence will be in the principia, probably. Make yourselves at home. Welcome to The Swamp.” The guard paused and then added, “…sir.”

            As the gate was already propped open Marcus waved his men forward.

            “Come on chaps. Form up and wait for me inside. I’ll present our orders to the commander.” Within the defences were tents, leather tents laid out in rows on the same bare mud as was everywhere under foot. There was a row of lavatory pits, open to the elements, being utilised by three sullen squadies. With little enthusiasm Marcus approached the only building on the site. It hardly deserved the title principia being a wooden structure, its roof ridge barely fifteen feet off the ground. The main, east, door was approached through a small courtyard inhabited by chickens. A tan coloured sow grubbed in the doorway of an outbuilding.

            Inside Marcus stood in a hall that extended the full width of the building, Facing him was a pierced screen beyond which he could make out a shrine and the unit’s standard. To each side of this sacellum were doors to adjoining rooms. The one to his left appeared to be locked, but to his right the door stood ajar and someone beyond it had a nasty cough. Marcus called out.

            “Could someone direct me to the unit commander?”

            “Who’s that?” The reply was in Latin spoken with a thick Spanish accent and the figure that appeared in the doorway was short and a little overweight. He was wearing breeches under his tunic and a long sheepskin coat that had seen better days, or perhaps it had not. “You look bedraggled. What do you want?”

            “The unit commander.”

            “You’re talking to him. So…?”

            “Sorry sir. Er… Sir…

            “We… I have just arrived with the construction detachment. I believe we are expected. Our orders…” Marcus ferreted around in his satchel, produced a number of tablets and handed them over. The first of the thin wooden diptychs, hand written in cursive Latin script, introduced the bearer to the base commander. A Second tablet named the members of the detachment and detailed any particular skills. And yet another tablet laid out their mission. The men were to build a hostelry to a standard plan. This site was to become a staging post on the road to… To where? The road led from Nowhere to Nothinghere.

            “Thank you. You are a medic I see. That could be useful. Most of my men are Belgians, hailing from some bog no better than this. But I have Syrian archers that have never taken to the climate. Always going down with something.

“I’ve already had tents erected for you and your men, over by the west wall. Get yourselves sorted out. And get over to the mess tent while there’s still something hot on the go. Report back in the morning.”             The Spaniard turned back into his room without acknowledging Marcus’ salute. The forlorn orderly squelched out, leaving a pool of water on the flagstones where he had been standing.

March or Die

As soon as the detachment was out of sight of the fortress of Vindolanda they moved to the side of the road. The eight-man team nearest to Marcus cut away a circle of sward and started to build a foot-high, stone wall around the cleared ground. The rest of the troop had split into small groups and were doing the same.
“What exactly is going on?”
One of the Germans had produced a thick dry log from his pack and propped it, upright within the circle. It had a hole drilled down the centre. He looked up.
“Second breakfast.”
As Marcus began to protest the team leader sauntered over. Dressed in a copper scale-armour shirt with a Sparta hanging from his belt, soft leather trousers and puttees, a fox pelt covering his bronze helmet and a heavy gold torque round his neck he made an intimidating figure as he loomed over the orderly.
“We’re all willing to pretend you’re in charge, sonny, but don’t push it. We’ll get you to whatever shit hole we’re headed for in plenty of time. Grub will be up shortly.”
As the corporal walked away Marcus yearned longingly after the retreating boots. What he wouldn’t give for boots like that instead of his standard issue sandals. And a pair of trousers.
Throughout this exchange the huddled group of auxiliaries had been filling the hole in their log with tinder, sprinkling the whole thing liberally with alcohol from a flask of home-brew and now struck flint to steel. There was a spark, an explosion and a plume of choking smoke. Within minutes flames jetted from the hole in the log. A shallow pan appeared and a string of fat, pale sausages. As they sizzled and browned the Teutonic NCO, tesserarius in auxilia parlance, broke up two coarse loaves and called over.
“Hey, Enema, get yourself wrapped round some of this.”
The bread was dry and the sausages composed of heavily spiced gristle encased in the tough intestine of an unidentified road kill. It took some chewing, but Marcus had to admit he felt better with something warm inside him. While he mopped up the last fatty residue with a piece of bread the rest of the company were removing any signs of the temporary campsite and packing away their utensils. Soon they were all back on the road.
As they marched on a persistent, icy drizzle set in. Marcus pulled his woollen cloak about him and watched a pair of ravens circling in the dank, grey sky.
“They’ll have spotted a carcass out on the moor. Dead sheep I shouldn’t wonder. Name’s Hermann by the way. Shall I send a couple of men over to see if there’s anything edible?” The tesserarius' scale armour and studded baltea clinked as he trudged.
“I’m Marcus. And no, we don’t have time and don’t need to raid some disgusting rotting corpse.”
“Right you are, Enema.”
At midday they stopped for a meal of grey, glutinous boiled cereal. It was spooned out from a sealed container in thick, moist lumps and mixed with goat’s milk and an equal measure of their alcoholic beverage. There was little chance of a fire in the incessant rain so it was eaten cold.
Late afternoon saw them parked at the roadside yet again, eating bread and cheese. Marcus was cold, fed up and had kicked a dry-stone wall in frustration, never a good idea in sandals.

Marcus the Medicus

Vindolanda was not exactly a cushy posting. It was on the edge of nowhere, days away from any vestige of civilisation, in the middle of the bleakest landscape he had met anywhere on his travels with the army. When it was not freezing it was raining and the locals spoke Latin with such a thick accent that no one at the fort could understand one word in three.
“We require four dozen eggs and two freshly slaughtered pigs, my good lady.”
“Weyeye hinny.” What sort of reply was that? ‘Certainly sir, right away sir’ or ‘up yours’? It could mean anything.
Marcus had picked up some medical knowledge from a Greek doctor when he was a lowly footslogger on a posting in the South of France. Later he had helped treat horrendous gaping head wounds in the Dacian wars, inflicted by the barbarians’ dreadful war-sickle. The falx was curved, heavy and could punch a hole through shield or helmet to reach the soldier behind. He still wore the reinforcing bands across the top of his galea that the armourers out there had improvised as a form of defence. If he must die, it would not be with that pleading, hopeless stare in his eyes and his brains dribbling out between his ears. In Egypt most of his patients had bellyaches and diarrhoea, though he had learned to cure infections with the mouldy-bread poultice favoured by the natives. Here, close to The Wall, the commonest complaint was chilblains.
Being a medical orderly did not protect him from being hacked at and skewered whilst he defended the Pax Romana against the tattooed and moustachioed barbarian, but in more peaceful times it did excuse him from endless drilling and cleaning. At Vindolanda he had felt he was working the system quite well. Then a troop of Germans passed through his region and he was transferred. They were short of a doctor. He was an indifferent soldier and an average health-carer. His unit decided they could spare him.
The Germans were blonde giants with no sense of humour. He was two foot shorter than any of them. They did not need a medical orderly. What they needed was a vet. They cauterised wounds that would kill a normal human being, with a red-hot gladius, and treated most ailments with an alcoholic drink that gave you the squits for a week. It seemed to work though, if you survived the cure.
Vindolanda fort had not been a cushy posting, but much of it was stone built and it was well supplied. Marcus had left it at dawn, accompanied by a detachment of some seventy men who did not respect him, and was charged with ensuring they all arrived at a camp he had never heard of, a day’s march along the shoddiest road the Empire had ever been responsible for, through the dreariest landscape this island could devise. They were, his charges, singing loud, ugly drinking songs.

Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia

The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia

           On St George’s Day 2015, whilst the nation was temporarily without a government, Phoebles, the one and only Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercian, announced his intention to declare The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia independent of the United Kingdom in general and the Westminster Parliament in particular.

            The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia occupies an approximately one half of a millihectare corner of The Snug in Ye Olde Dolphin Inne, Derby.

The official flag of the Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia.

History

            In July of 918 AD, some decades after the crushing of The Great Heathen Army (Mycel Heathen Here) and the liberation of Derby from the tyranny of the Dane Law by the housecarls of Lady Æthelflæda, the Snug of Ye Olde Dolphin Inne (At that time the Eallniew Delfin Inn) was granted autonomy by Ælfwynn who had succeeded Æthelflæda as Lady of the Mercians (Myrcna Hlæfdige) a month earlier, on the occasion of her mother’s demise. The exact events leading to this grant are not known and the relevant paperwork has subsequently been mislaid.

           

            In 1745, following the rout of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s Highland Army, which had been billeted in The Dolphin, at the Battle of Swarkstone Bridge, a little way south of Derby, a grateful king George II wrote a letter of thanks to the landlord in which it is certain that the monarch ratified the independent status of The Snug. If only the current whereabouts of this historic document were known.

            In the mid to late 1960s there were a small number of drug fuelled attempts to establish a Free State within the confines of The Dolphin Inn. These invariably came to naught, primarily due to restrictions imposed by the draconian licensing laws of the time.

            Then, on the 23^rd of April 2015 The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia became a reality. The future is in our hands.

Titular Head of State

            Boz (dec.)

Economy

            The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia has a tab at the bar and is currently running a fiscal deficit.

  

Population

            Phoebles

 Citizenship

            Visiting immigrants are welcomed personally by the landlord of The Olde Dolphin Inne and Temporary Citizenship is freely granted to anyone willing to buy a round.

Future

            The ultimate aim of The Autonomous Anarcho-Surrealist Utopia of Micromercia is to break out geographically from the confines of Ye Olde Dolphin Inne and form a loose federation with the historic Mercian capitals of Repton and Tamworth and environs there of. Together we will revive the traditional brewing industry in Burton, nationalise Rolls Royce and the railways and restore the Derby Navigation in order to establish a maritime link with the mighty trading ports on the banks of Humber and Mersey. It is our intention that the NHS will once more have proper matrons and nurse’s uniforms and that veterinary services will be encompassed within a fully funded welfare state.

50 Shades of London Smog

I hardly need to point out that this is one of me Dad's writings, not mine, and it's...

Just a teeny bit NWS

“Take me. Take me here. Take me now.” Mary arched backwards across her mother’s tombstone, her bosoms heaving above her tight-laced corset, skirts riding up to reveal her trembling, fishnetted thighs.

            Percival removed a deep purple velvet jacket and untied his cravat. Sliding his hands over the cool white captive flesh, upwards towards her waist, he loosened her bloomers and slid them off. Mary sucked in a sharp breath, her ribs came up against the restricting girdle that bound her organs and she began to swoon.

            “Percy, get your mind off what’s down there and undo these stays or you’ll be shagging a zombie.”

            He loved it when she talked dirty. He fumbled with the laces, released the pert breasts, and allowed the night air into her lungs. Percival dropped his breeches to his knees. Harsh iron straps and rivets that protected her parent’s corpse from the attentions of the resurrection men pressed into Mary’s back and bare buttocks. Her dark nipples hardened under his attention. Her delicate hand guided him. She locked her legs around his waist, one stocking now ruckled down around a slender ankle, and a long moan wafted across the moonlit graveyard whose outer reaches were shrouded in an ever deepening St Pancras smog.

            The haunting sound startled a walrus that was, just at that moment, flopping its bulk out of some rhododendron bushes where it had been relieving itself, sheltered from prying eyes. Carrying a roll of Bronco under one flipper the shortsighted creature peered about. Not far ahead the full moon reflected off a moonlike gyrating white shape that was not immediately identifiable as a naked arse. Blue veined and spot speckled it was performing gentle figures of eight to the accompaniment of short high-pitched yelps. The amphibious mammal waddled over to inspect the phenomenon close to, its approach undetected by the self-absorbed couple. It sniffed at the exposed posterior. Its bristling moustache brushed against the tender flesh and it snorted a fine spray of sea-watery atomised mucus onto the pimpled derriere.

Something shrivelled within Mary and plopped out through the gates of paradise into the chill night air. She opened her eyes and, staring past her lover at the silhouetted baldhead and shining, black button eyes let out a hideous scream.

Nocturnal London held its breath, Percival dropped to his knees as if his face had been slapped, the walrus staggered back in horror, tripped on the edge of a newly exposed grave and fell backwards into the freshly opened coffin. The creature’s great heart raced, faltered and stopped. Bands of cramped muscle tightened around the animal’s chest, crimson pain pulsed through its body and then there was nothing.

            “I think it’s dead.” Mary was staring down into the hole, her clothing in disarray and some of her finest features shamelessly on display. Percival was on all fours. He had thrown up.

            “Oh Cripes, what shall we do?” He was sick again. “Sorry about that, I think I’m in shock. There’ll be an investigation. The Runners will knock on doors. Your dad always thinks the worst of me, he’s bound to assume we were involved.”

            “Fill the grave in again.” The body snatchers had conveniently left their spade sticking in the top of the pile of recently dug soil. She tossed him the shovel. “Quick.   There’s nothing suspicious about a fresh grave in a churchyard.”

            After some strenuous shovelling they patted down the soil and, having robbed a nearby grave of its flowers, Mary laid a posy on the burial. They scoured the area around Mary’s mother’s tombstone for abandoned clothing, dressed quickly and headed for the street.

            “Whatever you do don’t go boasting about this with your mates down the pub.”

            “Do you honestly think I’m ever going to tell anyone I spent the night burying a walrus in a St Pancras churchyard?”

            “Not that, the other. You’re still married - and I’m not quite sixteen.”

One hundred years later, the following article appeared in a local newspaper:

Walrus remains found buried under St Pancras station in London

A Pacific walrus has been discovered among 19th century human burials underneath St Pancras Station in London.

By Bartholomew Pratt

23 Jul 2013

Archaeologists found the four-metre-long walrus with 1,500 human bodies as part of excavations at the station, amid the renovation of the station into the Eurostar terminal.

The bones were in a coffin and are thought to have been used for medical research some time in the early 1800s.

Both the archaeologist who discovered the bones and the zoologist who studied them for the Museum of London are not sure how the bones came to be in St Pancras Church on the northern side of the station.

“It’s a bit of a mystery”, the archaeologist told this reporter

“We did some research to see if we could find any record of a walrus being dealt with, for example, by the London Zoological Society, but we drew a blank.”

The archaeologist said there was a reference to Prince Albert “riding on the back of a giant tortoise”, but added that this was not relevant to the bones they found.

“It is possible the animal bones were being dissected as practice, but it does seem to be a rather exotic animal to be dealing with”, he added.

The most plausible reason for the walrus being in London was that it was brought to the city by whalers and sold for medical research or as a curiosity, they said.

While the zoologist had found the remains of an ostrich and big cats on archaeological excavations in London, this was his first encounter with a walrus.

“Although we have considerable evidence of whales in London, from porpoises up to blue whales, in all my experience we haven’t had any other bones of walruses except small fragments of skull which have been chipped to get out the tusks”, he told the newspaper.

He said that walrus skins were used for buffing metal and there was a trade in their tusks for ivory.

How it came to be in St Pancras is a mystery even to experts.

The Lizard Kings' Threat

At the end of Larry’s speech a great roar of approval from Captain Rotskagg Blenkinsopp caused several small children to burst into tears. There had been little in Mad Jack or Larry’s adjurations that had not rung true to the philosophy of the gaily-coloured Tamworth Ranters. They began to saunter away to continue enjoying their gala. The Scots and Corsairs however had travelled a great distance, prepared to argue forcefully for their ancient and traditional right to pillage. They had come down with the intention of arguing long and hard, winning concessions and drunkenly conceding as few privileges as possible. Were they really going to go away and just get on with each other? They hung around in small groups shrugging and mumbling.

            ‘Well, it sounds good enough to me,’ boomed Rotskagg. ‘Gué fatu, Camaradas? You Reivers be masters of animal husbandry, though in the past they have tended to been someone else’s animals. You will prosper. And us corsairs will find noble outlets for our seafaring bravado. Here is ale and women and I shall have exhausting of both. Vadu dal lavutana, fetch me a fiddler, I have a mind to Hornpipe. Anna, wildling, put those matches away and teach me Stripping the Willow.’

            The stage was cleared and the Massed Mariachi, taking up position at the microphones, began to play La Cucaracha with the Kittens of Chaos doing a daring can-can in the background. Barely into the second chorus the music tailed off, black clouds covered the sun and the sky darkened. A large group of heavily armed Chats Suterrains materialised onto the stage all in white leather coats, purple-glassed goggles and pith helmets. They brushed the band aside whilst the Kittens of Chaos seethed. Outnumbered and outgunned they sat heavily on Kiki le Berserker before she could start a scrap. Her boggle-eyes fired imaginary thunderbolts and her spittle ate corrosively into the smoking floorboards. Several sturdy Chats dragged two heavy campaign chests to the front of the stage and opened one of them out to reveal a Tesla coil on a copper coloured pylon. A polished metal cage was bolted in place around it and heavily insulated high tension cables were run out to the second crate. Le Chat-in-charge threw a large knife switch and the contents of the box set up a wild humming that ascended in pitch until it achieved a nerve shattering whine. Lightning crackled outwards from the Tesla coil and an eerie green ionised mist began to spread from around the arcing electro-magnetic discharge. Slowly an image formed within the billowing cloud. It was a holographic figure, convincingly life like except for being green, transparent and a bit wobbly. It was bipedal, bulky and scaly. An angular reptilian head hissed and flicked out its tongue and Phoebles felt he could discern something a bit tentacley around the upper lip. Piercing, bilious eyes with narrowly slit-pupils seemed to grow and grow until they were all that the onlookers were aware of. They appeared to glare disconcertingly into the soul of each individual in the audience.

            ‘MEDLING EARTHLINGS. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE. WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. AND WE KNOW WHERE YOUR CHILDREN GO TO SCHOOL. WE WILL REMEMBER!’

Pause… then a dramatic crack as the coil discharged and the plasma cloud dispersed. Les chats packed up their equipment and departed without a word.

            ‘Bugger me!’ exclaimed Dark Flo.

            Everyone seemed to be looking around at once, some scared, some bemused. A search for Les Chats Souterrains was rapidly organised, Polly Karpova flew her Red Rata in low-level sorties over the fair ground, but no trace of their presence could be discovered. Slowly the skies cleared and daylight returned; for the moment the prophetic threat was put to one side and the Mariachi struck up once more.

Much later the gang were having a romantically lantern-lit picnic supper spread out on a luscious vintage tangerine/red, Chiadma goats wool rug that Beryl had picked up in an Essaouiran souk. Scrumpled napkins and greasy paper plates of discarded chicken wings and sandwich crusts littered the carpet and surrounding grass.

            ‘Did we actually fix anything?’ asked Phoebles.

            ‘Doubt it.’ Googleberry looked up from his bowl of pyrotechnical bread-and-butter pudding, with custard. ‘It looked a bit working class, so I stuck a sparkler in it,’ he explained as he reclined, sucking noisily between mouthfuls on an Iznik porcelain hubble-bubble pipe.

            ‘And the Lizard Thing’s threat?’

            ‘Oh, probably just the prelude to another adventure.’

            Boz watched a white plume moth carelessly spiralling in towards a guttering, spluttering Tilly lamp that illuminated their repast, and he sighed.

The Pyramid Stage

Up on the pyramid stage The Kittens of Chaos, accompanied by Consuella Starcluster the tambourine virtuoso, were performing a selection of their favourite bits from ‘Prestupleniye i Nakazaniye the Musical’, in which the nihilist Raskolnikov is encouraged to get out more and is introduced to vodka and fornication by the 6^th Form students of Madame Sofia Semyonovna Marmeladova’s Academy for Young Kittens. Following on from the conclusion of their act the bemused audience was subjected to a poetry reading by Ginsbergbear.

            “I have written a haiku,” he announced:

Haiku

Cake left in the rain.

Prince Albert teapot; it nev-

Er reigns, but it pours.

…and, oh so much later:

Your Mum and Dad

They muck you about

With a bottle of stout

And a pig in a poke

Like the funny old bloke

That Mummy said to call uncle

And Dad with his fags

After nocturnal shags

They’re wondering why

You’ve contracted a sty

Or forged on your bum a carbuncle

“The fault isn’t ours”

Your old pater glowers

“We had parents too

Addicted to glue

And fans of the songs of Garfuncle”

            After a long and embarrassing pause there came a dramatic fanfare from the recently bruised Massed Pit Bands of Federated Nottinghamshire joined by the Brick Lane Zapatista Mariachi Walking Wounded, and Larry stepped up to the mic.

            “Ehem…”

            Before he could speak he was surrounded, silently, by the serene men of the Himalayas, their yak skin coats dragging on the floor. The group moved to the front of the stage, parted and revealed, to everyone’s astonishment, Mad Jack Belvoir (Bart) with his ward, the fair, and now heavily pregnant, Pricilla. Gone was the up-tight uniform of the 3^rd (King’s Own) Hussars, his once magnificent handlebar drooped into a bushy Zapata mustachio and he wore a loose, grubby Kurta shirt over baggy candy striped trousers. He appeared unkempt, undernourished, and yet he was fire-forged steel, tempered in the acid bath of global perambulation.

              “Friends, we have all come a long way since you and I faced off against each other on the Cable Street barricade. Pricilla and I have travelled far, crossed desert and mountain, swum in turquoise seas, basked on crystal beaches, begged in shit-strewn shanties. We have studied at the feet of masters. I want to talk to you about the future. We are (most of us, I hope) groping towards an ill-defined anarchist utopia, an earnest utopia with co-ops and federations and communes and unions and autonomies and endless discussions at the Street Moot and the Factory Moot. It is a worthy utopia for born-again socialists, reformed capitalists and the recently oppressed. But remember, just a short stride across the green from the Moot Hall is the Mead Hall. The sailors and ships’ cats and corsairs and doxies, these Ranters and punks, won’t be content with such seriousness alone. There must be fun, and dancing and a little mayhem too. One day when we have our Anarchy, modified and reshaped from our earliest visions, when we have our justice and fairness, we will look out towards a new utopia, a utopia for anarchists, for men (and women and cats) who are already free, already fulfilled. With joy as of little children and unfettered imaginations we will lust for a glorious future without limits; what a vision that will be.”

              As Mad Jack paused for breath Larry stepped quickly back up to the mic. He was still somewhat put out and prickly.

            “Friends. It is possible that Citizen Belvoir has a point… or two. I was about to suggest that we representatives of diverse groups, many of whom have travelled far to hammer out our differences, adjourn to the Ranters’ Moot Hall and forge a concord that would guarantee peace and prosperity for all time. It is what we had planned, why we are here. But I, for one, am having too much fun. Who cares about differences? It is a glorious day; let us celebrate our commonality. Return to the beer tent and the dance floor; strike up the Mariachi. Sod tomorrow, we are surrounded by friends.”

The Brass Band Competition

            Ferdy pulled Phoebles away from the food table, just as he was starting on his third mooncake.

            “But I’m in the middle of… Do those pink things look like prawn cocktails to you? I’m very fond of prawns.”

            Outside, a stretch of lawn had been cleared, and groups of bandsmen were polishing their instruments, shaking out the accumulated spittle and setting up music stands. Each Brass Band was similarly uniformed, somewhat like bus-conductors, with peaked caps, but distinguished by colour. There were mills’ bands in maroon or navy, miners’ bands in scarlet, charcoal or green, and a Sergeant Pepper tribute in shimmering pink, yellow, sky-blue and crimson satin.

            The SPZ and Brick Lane Zapatista Massed Marching Mariachi were on the brink of being disqualified for not being Traditional and were being defended vociferously by The Megadeath Morris, already barred on account of not remotely resembling a brass anything. The resultant loud squabbling had drawn a crowd. Eventually it was agreed that the trumpet section from the Massed Mariachi along with a small contingent of buglers from the West Surrey Mounted Makhnovchina could compete, but there were to be strictly no guitarrón mexicano or fiddles.

            Unseen behind one of the moot hall’s open windows, and with his back to it so that he would not be influenced or prejudiced by any prior knowledge regarding the contestants, the competition adjudicator sat waiting to pass judgement on each performance. The order of play was determined by the drawing of lots from a venerated cloth cap, donated by Keir Hardie himself in times gone by – and, after much fumbling and faffing, the competition was under way.

            By the third rendition of Mull of Kintyre Phoebles was becoming fidgety and Boz had dozed off. He woke with a start as the Zapatista Mariachi launched into The Birdie Song. Their chances of winning were looking slim, but Snowdrop was wolf whistling and shouting “Encore!” While he slept they had been joined by Anna and Bui. Aunty Stella was there too, having changed from her Subcommondante’s uniform into denim jeans and a salmon-red and black bee-striped fuzzy jumper. She had Googleberry with her and he had acquired a large Italian ice-cream cone.

            “Some foreign chap with a black eye was giving them away before they melted, from a Galatia tricycle with a bent wheel and defunct freezer. Looked like it’d been blown apart by a minor explosion.”

            As the competition results were announced over the Tannoy system there was loud applause from the crowd, and some grumbling from the competitors.

            “Look. Over there.” Ferdy had spotted Barrymore striding jauntily towards them across the green. She was beckoning furiously for them all to meet her half way.

            “Larry wants every one out front of the main stage as soon as you’re finished here. Who won?”

            Phoebles shrugged, “That bunch with the tubas and trombones and stuff, I think. Or that other lot with trumpets and French horns and a drum. Or maybe…”

            “Never mind.”

            Behind them a fight had broken out. Two bandleaders were at war over the competition trophy, grasping a handle each and tugging in opposite directions. More and more bandsmen joined in, swinging their instruments like halberds. 
            "Jocks awaaah!"
            There was a sudden surge as a wave of screaming Reivers and wildcats plunged into the fray. And then, scattering combatants in all directions, Rotskagg Blenkinsopp was in the midst with an ululating Dark Flo balanced precariously on his shoulders.

            “Someone is going to get hurt,’ said Barrymore. As Boz and Co watched the spreading mayhem the Ranters moved in.

            “Peace and love, man.”

            “Group hug.”

            “Karma.”

            Ducking fists the Ranter men folk distributed flowers and spliffs. Girls, wriggling in between the grappling factions, handing out catnip mooncakes and kisses, began to calm the situation. As the violence subsided Rotskagg and Flo emerged from the crowd.

            “Well that ended a bit disappointingly,” she said to Boz, “Blenkinsopp and I barely got started. Who are those hippie kill-joys?”

             Barrymore resumed, “Larry. Main stage. All of you. Don’t hang about too long. Oh, and Mr Boz, Larry says someone has to pay for that airship he lent you. Have any of you seen Slasher McGoogs. The acting PM would like a word with him too.”

            Googleberry started to whistle innocently, which is not easy with a mouth full of ice-cream.

           “Not really his kind of scene, this,” said Boz, “Doubt we’ll see anything of him today.” He tried to put a conspiratorial arm upon Barrymore’s shoulder, but couldn’t quite reach that high. “Erm… About that airship…” he almost whispered.