The Barricade

That evening the Prime Minister appeared in a simultaneous transmission on all major television channels.   He was flanked by union flags, and Mr Fluffy stood behind him, one paw on his shoulder.   There was, he announced, to be a rally in Parliament Square the following morning.   He urged all right minded patriots to be there as it was to be followed by a march to Tower Hill.   There they would regroup before  proceeding down Royal Mint Street, along Cable Street and on into Limehouse and Poplar.   They would retake the docks, by force if absolutely necessary, restoring normality and stability to the nation.   The broadcast ended with him standing, hand on heart whilst the National Anthem played out under slow mixes to old footage of Battle of Britain Spitfires and selected clips from Sink the Bismark.


A council of war was convened in an upstairs room in Charlie Brown's.   This legendary dockland public house, legendary at least amongst the world wide maritime community, is  more properly named the Railway Tavern, it sits on the corner of Garford Street close to the gates of the West India Dock and is always referred to by the name of its renowned, broken nosed, ex-pugilist landlord, the self proclaimed 'uncrowned king of Limehouse'.   The building had been commissioned by Charrington and Company, it is some five storeys high, over a basement, is crowned by a copper-covered cupola and aspires to a bastardised Baroque style.   The interior is a museum of curiosities gathered from all parts of the world, gifted by seaman sailing into the docks of East London. The majority of the souvenirs and nick-nacks in the collection, hanging from ceilings, nailed to walls, crowded on shelves, are from the Far East and Polynesia.      
Boz was (sort of) chairing the meeting, which was degenerating into something of a buffet; cheese sandwiches and beer had been provided, on the house, by the proprietor, Charlie Brown.   Ginsbergbear coughed and Phoebles banged a beer mug, freshly drained, on the table.   The ships' cats and a small contingent of Kronstadt sailors, being more inclined to action than the rest, shushed the disparate anarchist and communist factions and eventually gained their attention.   Boz recounted what he could remember of his one sided conversation with Slasher McGoogs.   Much of his concentration had been taken up at the time by the ugly automatic pistol that was being pointed his way and he was still a bit shaky. 
It was agreed that the march must be stopped and that it would be halted in Cable Street near to St George's Town Hall.
The Brick Lane Zapatistas were put in charge of constructing and manning a series of sturdy barricades, whilst La Columna  would help to secure the side streets and alleys.
Those Marxist-Leninists, Trots and Maoists present put aside their doctrinal differences and, declaring that the time was not yet right  for action, retired to The Prospect of Whitby on Wapping Wall to wait out the coming events.
With time of the essence the company then downed their beers, polished off the sandwiches, made use of the tavern's urinals and litter trays and proceeded down Cable Street to make their preparations.


Fuelled by strikers’ braziers and the smoke from burning police cars an old fashioned London fog had descended on the East End.   A red glow from bonfires and torches coloured the smog and suffused the shadowy buildings that lined the street with a crimson light.   Curling smoke constructed sinuous dragons which twisted through the air above the scene.
The anarcho-surrealists in panto costumes were dispatched to form a redoubt at the junction of Cable Street with Dock Street.   Much in evidence, as with most of the irregulars, was their weapon of choice, the Classic Burp® Gun manufactured by Ack-Ack Inc of East Detroit Michigan.   They had strict instructions that theirs was to be a delaying action only, there was to be no last ditch stand.   When overrun they were to fall back and melt away, their job then would be to harry and slow the marchers.   They were joined at the redoubt by Snowdrop in ballet tutu and Red Army budionovka pixy hat, on her unicycle, juggling flaming brands and assuming tenuous command. 


In Parliament square the Royal Marines' Regimental Brass Band played a medley of Elgar's more stirring tunes before a high podium and lectern that bristled with microphones.   From here the Prime Minister gave yet another rousing speech,  though it transpired that he would not himself be on the march - prevented by an unfortunate prior engagement.
Rank upon rank of black clad riot policemen in visored helmets, already rhythmically tapping their truncheons against their shields, formed up behind the band; then came paramilitary cadre units of fundamentalist Young Conservatives and public school boy volunteer brigades, uniformly equiped with Saturator SIG SAUER 556’s; finally the massed irregulars with Burp® guns and assorted cheap water pistols bought, en route, from a branch of Lidl Stiftung and Co. KG.
On arriving at Tower Hill, their ranks swollen by thousands of patriotic peasants with pitchforks, flaming torches and of course, Burp® guns, they encountered the East End fog.   The column was also joined by the dark shape of a Metropolitan Police medium range pursuit airship which, forced to fly too high above the fog bank, was to play no significant part in the day's events.   The band struck up once more and the advance into the alien maze of streets that lay beyond the walls of the great city began.


The primary barricade spanning Cable Street, constructed from iron bedsteads, pallets, up turned carts, assorted furniture and the occasional shell of a motor vehicle, being completed and topped with red flags, black flags, red and black flags, the Brick Lane Zapatistas took up their positions.   Silhouetted figures armed with STR80-AK47 Aquafire combat water weapons mounted the barricades and presented clenched fisted salutes to the featureless mist.   They shall not pass!  ¡No pasaran!   Consuella Starcluster with the republican flag draped across her bodice and wearing a profondo rosso frigian cap with the blood, puss and scab rosette of her spiritual homeland, topped the highest pinnacle.   

Kronstadt Sailors under the command of Phoebles, who was wearing a saucepan on his head and which he feared may well be stuck, manned giant rubber catapults (three man bomb launchers), in a line behind the barricade, with a plentiful supply of water bombs and flour bombs.
Track had been removed for some distance north and south of Shadwell station to prevent the Government  from deploying its armoured trains.   Ex-miners from Wales and Yorkshire had come in via the backroads to avoid police road blocks and they were to guard the sewers and underground tunnels against surprise attack.
Slates were removed from the roof of the Italianate Vestry Hall so that  Ginsbergbear could take up a commanding position above the cornice with his powerful Exploderz X Ranger 1075 water machine gun.   The defences were ready.


There followed a nervous pause in the proceedings until, far in the distance, could be heard a marching band playing Colonel Bogey.   It faltered and was drowned out by the cries and clamour of conflict.   The anarcho-surrealists had gone into action.
To the rear, amidst the reserve troops and baggage an ex-colliery brass band responded with the Marseilles and Internationale and a small Welsh choir sang out a baritone rendition of Lloyd George Knew My Father.

Kanal

The manhole was dingy and deep.   Boz went first, then Phoebles, then Ferdy  and Ginsbergbear brought up the rear, replacing the cover above his head in the interest of health and safety.   Clambering down a corroded iron ladder they descended, gingerly into the wondrous construct that is the subterranean world created by Joseph Bazalgette.   They were in a sewer, and Ferdy was wearing his best Rupertbear tartan trousers!   He produced a Penlite torch and flashed it along the tunnel.   It just about picked out a running shadowy figure.   "Got him!"
And thus began such an epic pursuit that it was recounted around the winter fires to kittens' kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and their kittens and...
The victorian brickwork  enclosed vast vaulted chambers, wide tunnels, cramped oval culverts, described elegant arches, steps and pavements, water channels and weirs. there were iron stairs, ladders, walkways and pipes.   Ahead they would hear the clatter of heals on stone, the clank of soles on grating the splash of shoes in water; sometimes close, sometimes far away.   They ran alongside fast flowing streams, splashed through sluggish shallows, waded as water in the narrower passages deepened.
Eyes watched them from almost every side tunnel.   The rats down here were the size of Gloucester Old Spots, but remained aloof, neither helping McGoogs nor hindering our heroes.   Sometimes eyes on stalks, emerald or mauve or both at once, popped up out of the liquor, looked around and sank again followed by a stream of bubbles.

Often they thought they had lost him amongst the maze of passageways and interconnecting tunnels, but each time someone would hear a splash or scrape ahead and off they would go again.   When, eventually, the battery in Ferdy's flash-light died they found that many of the strange shapes floating on the liquid in which they paddled glowed a feint and unearthly green, casting just enough of a glimmer to see by once their eyes had adjusted.
A regular metallic ringing ahead hinted that someone was climbing an iron ladder and, half swimming, half wading under a low archway the quartet found themselves in a high chamber at the foot of a long vertical shaft.   The ladder ascending one side was new and galvanised there was a tiny circle of light at the top.   Within the chamber a noisome, gaseous vapour was writhing sluggishly across the surface of the sludge.   The climb began.
They emerged into the mind blowingly awe inspiring Pump Hall of the The Cathedral of the Sewers.   The great beam engines hissed, nodded and clunked to a slow rhythm, cast-iron pillars, arches and galleries soared in a dazzle of red lead, sky blue and gilt.   They were within the Abbey Mills Pumping Station whose architectural wizardry had eclipsed the Taj Mahal, the Brighton Pavilion and all but rivalled the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.
A door banged.   The great outer double-doors had been flung back and were rebounding.   The gang rushed through and out into the blighted wastelands that straddle the margins between middle earth and the world ocean.   Ahead of them scrambling and lurching across the marshes ran Slasher, coat tails flapping around his bent form like a wounded bat.
"Come on!" cried Boz between rasping breaths and they resumed their chase onto the hinterland that is the Lea Delta.   Mist clung languidly in the canals and channels between tussocks of coarse, grey grasses.   A sullen sky loomed, a dense, wide mass over the land of doom, pressing fortitude and vigour down into the very boots of the pursuers.
Ginsbergbear was winded and beginning to split along his seams; Phoebles was germinating the hint of a possibility that his love of food was in the early stages of compromising his waistline and stamina;   Ferdy was failing to understand why evolution had deprived dodos of the more useful parts of their wings without making their legs longer; and the dank, sodden salt-marsh, after so many hours wading through Mr Bazalgette's slurry, was not helping with Boz's rheumatics.   They were thrashing and gasping through the mud and bog plants as Slasher McGoogs struggled onto a long and weather beaten wooden jetty - at its far end the low, rusting form of a battered old Bovril boat, belching black smoke from its stack.   This was the final destination of London's night soil.   Liquid and solids were separated and the purified water bottled and lightly effervesced by a process known as methanisation, for sale to the Savoy Hotel as a palate freshener for those who had been tempted towards the famed civet poo coffee.   The lumpy bits were loaded onto the Bovril boats and taken into the North Sea where an artificial and highly fertile reef was being built up for the benefit of the native marine life.
As his pursuers closed, a rotten plank cracked beneath Slasher and he fell forwards twisting a trapped foot.   He got up, limped a few paces and collapsed again.   Phoebles was jubilant and Ferdy managed a merry, "Ahaa!"   They would be able to surround him at last.
But then Slasher was on his unsteady feet, splay-legged and swaying.   Something cold, black and threatening sat in the hand that he waved towards them.   Ferdy and Phoebles, Ginsbergbear and Boz each had the unpleasant and highly personal experience of staring down the dangerous end of a Mauser Red Nine.
"Stand still!  Stay where you are!   Hands where I can see them!"
No one was arguing.
"This has gone far enough.   Now listen.   I am going away; something of a cruise.   You won't hear of me for a while.   But you lot have work to do.   Boz, there's a battle coming.   Let it - you couldn't stop it anyway.   Put up a good fight, but no heroics.   Don't let anyone get seriously hurt and when you loose - and you will lose - no fighting to the last man.   Disperse - and definitely, DON'T LET ANYONE BE CAPTURED.   That last bit's really important.
"Now, Ferdinand, soon as it's all done get down to the Isle of Dogs.   We've got the Dragon Rapide at a temporary air strip on Mud Chute Farm, the pilot will have a little job for you.   All of you... Don't screw up."   He turned and began a long slow limp down the jetty.
Several figures appeared on the Bovril boat.   They had wrinkled walnut hides, faded, moth-eaten guernseys, bandanas, stubs of clay pipe.   Some cast off the mooring lines, some helped Slasher over the rail.   The black funnel-smoke intensified, a shrill steam whistle sent plovers and sandpipers soaring skyward, and the bronze screw churned water beneath the stern.   The unassuming vessel left the jetty, rippled the mirror surface of a Thames at slack water and turned for the open sea.

Ferris Wheel

It was carnival night and most of the crowd were masked.   There were twenty Captain Jack Sparrows, three Marie Antoinettes with shepherdess' crooks, carrying their lambs, Captain Ahab stumping along on narwhale tusk peg leg and Ginsbergbear hurrying through the press of revellers.   And then... there was a figure standing at the foot of the big wheel, in shadow but for a slash of pulsing neon light cast across his lower face and breast.   He was wearing a red and black striped polo neck jumper beneath his drape jacket, a Lone Ranger mask and, of course, the grey homburg.   There were wide wooden steps up to a ticket office and then a turnstile, the ferris wheel looked considerably more impressive close too - in fact it was massive.   Slasher McGoogs paid for the two of them at the kiosk and ushered Ginsbergbear into one of the cars.   They  had the space to themselves.
The wheel began to turn slowly, but when their car reached its zenith it stopped abruptly.   The flimsy car swayed and Slasher McGoogs, his legs spread and a psycotic glint in his eyes, slid open the door.   The lonely, haunting, plunking tones of a distant zither drifted in.
"You should come over here and look down.   It's very spectacular."
Ginsbergbear was in the far corner, as far from the open door as possible, white knuckles gripping the rail.   He could see the lights of Park Lane and Oxford Street from where he was and had no intention of moving.
"What's going on?   Why have we stopped?"
"I bribed the operator.   I feel that an atmosphere of uncertainty and intimidation will enhance the conversation that we are about to have.
"Now... your friends.   Their activities are getting in my way and attracting undue attention.
"I want you to tell them to stop looking.   I need a little space... and time."
Ginsbergbear gabbled, "What the...?   Why me?   What ARE you up to?   Why aren't you dead?   What on earth gives you the idea they will listen to me?" 
"Make them!"
"...No, you make them.   Tell them yourself.   If we're causing you so much inconvenience then you're going to have to trust us with some answers.   No-one is fooled by this accident story.   Meet us somewhere safe-ish and explain yourself."
Slasher did not appear enthusiastic.   Eventually, "Limehousesailortown is an Establishment no go area.   The Den, tomorrow morning."
The wheel started to turn again, on a waved signal from McGoogs, and the instant their cab reached the ground Slasher sprang from the car, vaulted the barrier and disappeared into the crowd. Ginsbergbear spent a few minutes with his head between his knees and then pulled a large meerschaum bowled calabash from a pocket in his baggy corduroy trousers, packed it with a charge of Black-Alamout Catnip Shag and sucked in several deep breaths, holding them until the world around him started to appear less unfriendly.   He pulled out his i-phone and called Boz.

"...Je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal tout ça m'est bien égal
Non, Rien de rien
Non, Je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi~oi!!!"
Sam was practicing Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien with The Kittens of Chaos before the evening's performance and like Piaf they intended to announce their dedication of the song to the Hunky French Foreign Legion.   Following the final rasping, gargled stanza the Kittens were all coughing and retching uncontrollably.
Our quartet were having a breakfast of buttered croissants and kipper fish cakes in the front bar of the den, sat at a round marble topped table in the gentle morning light of the bay window.   
"Aunty Stella's been in touch," reported Ferdy, "There's still no sign of Googleberry, but he's not turned up in any of the local vets' so everyone is optimistic."   They all jumped and spun round at the sound of a distant bump, as if a Chris-Craft Cadet had just come alongside the ladder out at the back.   Two shade-like white cats clambered over the balcony and entered through the French windows.   They were wearing steam punk brass and leather goggles with deep purple lenses and identical broad lapelled black leather, ankle length coats.   They were followed by Slasher McGoogs.
At this most unfortunate of moments a figure chose to emerge from the gents dressed in a dark trilby and a stiff trench coat with an ominous bulge under the left armpit.   Les deux Chats Souterrains instantly legged it back over the balcony rail and into their boat.   Nearby sirens could be heard and the throaty gunning of the triple Packard 12M engines that would power the River Police Fast Pursuit craft waiting in the next-door boatyard creek.

Slasher launched himself forward, barging through the customers, toppling tables and rushed out through the street door cat-flap.

"Don't lose him!" Shouted Boz - and the four of them dashed out into the morning chill of Narrow Street, just in time to see Slasher lift the cover off a man-hole and drop into its depths.

The Search for Slasher

Under instruction from Strawberry Aunty Stella's large and diverse family of cats split into small groups and fanned out across Surrey, sniffing under bushes, peering into windows and enquiring at fishmongers and dairies.   Ferdy made a daringly low level aerial survey of London in the vague hope of spotting the infamous signature grey homburg of McGoogs.   Boz had found YouTube footage of the Angel Alley address along with snippets showing someone very like Slasher McGoogs sharing a catnip spliff with pickets around a brazier outside the gates of St Katherine's Dock, ascending the steps between jet black monolithic guardians into the dread quarters of the omniscient Fluffy Media Corp, and sneaking round the back of Number Ten.   In the snug of the Town of Ramsgate, a trawlermen's riverside tavern in Wapping, Phoebles discovered that not only was the pub, originally the Red Cow, named after a particularly popular copper haired and deeply freckled barmaid from a time before juke boxes when executed pirates hung from gibbets above the London River mud, but that Slasher was to be seen regularly, in the company of les Chats Souterrains, disembarking from a Chris-Craft Cadet,  finished in richly varnished walnut, at the neighbouring Wapping Old Stairs, invariably after dark.   The trio of amateur sleuths was also repeatedly made aware that they were not alone in pursuing the spectral grey moggy.   Where-ever Boz and Phoebles went it seemed detectives or journalists had just left.

Montgomery  Manlove McGoogs died in the early hours of this morning in a random and bizarrely incongruous collision with a runaway milk float.

www.guardian.co.uk.   

Later in the day Radio 4 ran an obituary  for Slasher McGoogs.   It was brief and short on hard detail.   He had no traceable early life, arriving in the East End with a preformed reputation for dodgy dealing and a shadowy, ephemeral persona.

The KGB, it transpired, believed him to be a double agent who had been turned by British Intelligence.

MI5 reluctantly admitted to his indeed being a double agent, but suspected his allegiance to lie with the KGB.

The CIA thought he was a minor film actor with Mafia connections who had died of a drugs overdose in the late 1960’s.

Various East End Underworld snouts reported that he was definitely in the employ of Special Branch.

Whilst a police file, withheld despite the Freedom of Information Act, but obtained through Wikileaks, listed him as a criminal mastermind.


"And now he's dead."
"Hmm, very conveniently... with no witnesses to the accident and his body identified by two white cats with thick Occitan accents.   Perhaps we'll keep looking for a bit."
"But if the BBC..." Phoebles was by nature a little too trusting.
Phoebles, Boz and Ferdy met in the Town of Ramsgate to prepare for yet another nocturnal vigil, sipping milk-pale green fairies and surrounded by society’s jetsam.   At closing time they purchased a large bottle of ginger-beer, emerged onto the cobbled street and melted into the shadows.   Soon they were alone and as the night wore on the ever resourceful Ferdy took out his pack of sandwiches and thermos flask of Earl Grey.   There had been the gentle slap as tide mounted the worn stone stairs and, now, the splash and trickle of the waters receding.   The air was thick with the scent of cinnamon from the spice warehouses nearby, the sky was starless and overcast, there were distant rumbles of thunder.   With dawn approaching and the gloom around beginning to lift, a thin mist crept in from the river.   Twice during the night they had heard the gentle knock and creak of rowlocks, the drip of oars, but no-one had landed.

Phoebles knocked back the last of the ginger-beer. "Home then... again?"

Boz was just considering the possibility that he might have been wrong about Slasher's survival and wondering if this was the time to admit it to the others when a rope ladder landed in their midst.

"If you could pop up here for a moment, please, Mr Boz.   You will be able to rejoin your companions later."

They looked up and, hovering above them, saw a small, cigar shaped, bronze coloured airship; the canopy was banded with aluminium straps, it had a single broad-bladed propeller and a compact gondola from which dangled the precarious ladder.   In the open hatchway stood an impossibly tall, slender tortoise-shell in bottle green chauffeur's uniform.   She had huge dark eyes, possibly made up to enhance them even further.
"Please... It will be alright."
"I'll see you back at the pad." said Boz, beginning to climb.   Dangly pilot ladders are not the easiest things to negotiate for anyone but the most practiced of pilots and Boz didn't really do climbing.   However the dirigible had descended as low as it dare and eventually, somewhat puffed, he was allowing himself to be helped aboard by the torti chauffeur.    The cabin was fitted out in midnight blue velvet plush edged in gold cording, a large chandelier hung from the deck-head, a panel door with brass fittings led through to the bridge.
"Good morning, so at last I get to meet the famous Mr Boz."   A tabby cat wearing a red white and blue rosette sat in a deep tub chair holding a large brandy glass,   "I'm sorry, do sit down" he indicated towards a similar, but vacant seat.   "I am Larry from Number 10."
Boz sat.
"Barrymore, see to a drink for Mr Boz, would you."   The airship had ascended, turned west-nor'westward and was flying above the City.
"Is she driving AND waitressing?   Is that safe?"
"Let's not worry about Barrymore, very competent young lady.   Let's talk about you.   You're still looking for the recently deceased Mr McGoogs."   It was not a question and Larry did not seem to be expecting any form of answer.   "You appear to suspect that Mr McGoogs is some sort of secret force for good, with a plan.   He is not.   He is a despicable profiteer and we are better off with him dead."
Boz was feeling very uncomfortable.   The cabin was warm, he had not slept, the brandy gently burned in his stomach and this cat was terrifyingly confident.   "How do you know all this?   Did you have him killed?"
"People tell me things, Mr Boz.   And I don't kill... as a rule.
"We are on our way to make a hospital visit.   There's something I want you to see.   Do agree to come along."
They were crossing above the seeming random tangle of railway lines into Euston Station and soon began a descent into a tight courtyard outside the entrance to an apparently abandoned hospital.   Larry took Boz by the arm and led him into the building whilst Barrymore tethered the craft, above the entrance decorative brickwork spelled out 'London Temperance Hospital'.  The entrance hall was deserted, fallen plaster littered the marble floor, but along a corridor things began to bustle.   Nurses came out of doors striding efficiently in starched pinafores and black stockings, hurried past or plunged through other portals.   There was businesslike chatter.
Larry opened a door and encouraged Boz into a long Nightingale ward with two rows of identical, cream, iron beds.   On the edge of almost every bed sat, motionless, a cat in striped winsiette pyjamas; most stared vacantly beyond their inner space into the vacuum of eternity, some shook.   In the centre of one bed was a bulge under the bedclothes which twitched uncontrolably.   Another cat stood to attention at the bottom of his bed.   Larry ushered Boz towards him, but they were waylaid by a ward sister.   Boz could not take his eyes off her chest, where she had pinned a wonderful little upside down watch.
"Best leave him.  He will settle eventually."
Larry turned to Boz, "These are all here because of your Mr McGoogs.   All they needed to help them cope with the stresses of catlife was a little catnip at the right moment, something to layback the troubled soul, hush the cacophony.   And what did they get?   Krapola.   Honestly, that's what it sells as, Krapola Katnip, and it's rubbish.   It's force grown under artificial lights in vast sheds in Milton Keynes, it's thin and weedy with virtually no psychedelic properties, and it's not even cheap   He's flooded supermarkets and pet shop chains with the stuff and it affords no relief.   All these cats needed was a little break from reality and McGoogs denied it to them - for profit."
The nurse kissed Boz lightly on the forehead, "The monster is dead, and good riddance.   Go home and forget about him."

"A LITTERATE IRON

All Along An Algerian Alley…

Boisterous Blue Birds Bury Bulbs.

Cats Can Cry, '¡Caramba!' ‘Cos…

Dogs Do Dirty Deeds Down Drainpipes."

Ginsbergbear’s i-phone vibrated silently in his pocket.   He finished his recitation, but cut short the Question-and-Answer session.   Back in his bell tent he read the text message.

"Ferris wheel In half hour"

Mr Fluffy

Although Donald Pleasence shamelessly tried to steal every scene that he shared with Mr Fluffy, and despite  the incredible decision of the film company not to dignify such a central character as Blofeld's white cat with a name nor the feline thespian with a credit, he became a legend.   What no-one knew was that Mr Fluffy was not acting.   He was not, of course, CEO within SPECTRE - SPECTRE is after all a fictional organisation, but he was, even at this early stage, Lotte Lenya's Controller and an embryonic megalomaniac.

Emerging from Pinewood Studios sadder, wiser, yet with pockets filled with sovereigns, Mr Fluffy (He was still known as Young Fluffy back then, but not for long.) bought into the Cleethorpes Gazette which was on the brink of closure.   Specialising in lurid tales of the seedier activities on Cleethorpse's sea-front and searching exposés of corruption amongst local councillors the Gazette was soon outselling every local newspaper in Lincolnshire and, at least in Grimsby, outselling some of the less popular nationals too.   The time was ripe for expansion.

Buying newspapers had merely been a matter of flashing enough cash, television companies could be absorbed or broken with ease, but radio proved a tougher nut to crack.   Even today there were, he suspected, subversive elements operating within the bowels of Broadcasting House.

With practically the whole of the British news media in his hands Mr Fluffy acquired the defunct Black Cat Factory, which was lying derelict amidst the overgrown and neglected communal gardens of Mornington Crescent and, in one dark and thundery night, the air crackling with static and pavements wet with typesetters' tears, abandoned Fleet Street and moved his entire operation under one roof.   The magnificent Art Deco Egyptian Revivalist edifice, temple in equal parts to the cat goddess Bastet and the capitalist god Profit in his most concrete of forms, dominates surrounding Camden and surreptitiously stretches predatory claws out into the neighbouring landscape.   From the camera obscura on the rooftop terrace Mr Fluffy can look out onto the teeming mass of humanity below and know that he owns them all; bought or cowed they all dance when he plucks on their strings.

...over the pathetic corpses of your newborn!   These insufferable strikes and the economic crisis they have wrought, have forced the Government, against its will, to close Libraries, Hospitals and Old Peoples' Homes!   Un-affordable fire-engines and ambulances have had to be offered on e-bay!   This insurgency must not be allowed to continue - who are these unelected enemies of commerce, these self proclaimed assassins of Statehood?   Sign up for action today - crush the subversive pandemic before it overwhelms us all!

"I found this in the Press Tent, next to the Guinness counter." 

The gang were all gathered in Ginsbergbear's bell tent behind the Literary Yurt, observing yet another broadside.   They were seated in campaign chairs at a green baize topped campaign table, intense sunlight through the fabric of the tent cast red stripes across the scene, mugs of half drunk tea cooled neglectedly.   The Great Patriotic Festival was drawing smaller crowds since the strikes had begun to spread out from the East End, though the Steam Fair was still popular and Ginsbergbear's poetry readings had a small, but faithful following.

"And it is being reproduced in all the national newspaper and on the television; I know it is Slasher again.   The lefty stuff he was aiming at the workers has tailed of since the strikes began though."   Phoebles was frowning as his mind wrestled with complex and conflicting thoughts.   

"Word on the street is that he was pivotal in triggering the ship's cat strikes and has been seen in the company of several of Les Chats Souterrains."   Boz had been doing some serious investigating.

Ferdy appeared distracted, "But the Chats Souterrains are real wronguns, he can't be in with them." and Ginsbergbear leaned over to him with a sympathetic gesture, stroking the tip of one wing. 

"What's the matter, old pall?"

"Oh, it's nothing to do with all this.   Aunty Stella is upset.   No-one has seen Googleberry since we left him sunbathing on the lawn and that was a couple of days ago.   It's not like him to miss meal times."

Everyone agreed that Googleberry was not the type to get into any trouble and assured Ferdy that he would soon turn up, but the gentle dodo was not to be comforted.

"Les Chats have also been seen directing rats in the looting of the docks.   There's too much double dealing for my liking.   I can't get my head round what's going on." chipped in Phoebles, returning to the problem in hand.

Strawberry was frowning.   “Is Aunty Stella really worried?   Googleberry’s my friend…”

“OK.” from Boz, “Ferdy, whiz Strawberry home in the Cierva and come straight back.   Strawberry, organize search parties for Googleberry, there’s enough cats back there to be thorough.   But no one goes off alone and try not to lose anyone else.   The rest of us are going to have to corner Slasher and ask him straight out what he’s up to.   The whole situation is getting out of hand.”

“Does anyone else think contacting McGoogs might be a bit dangerous?”

Meanwhile strikes were spreading out from dockland.   The Clarkenwell printers were out over the arrest of one of their own; there was a lock out at Billingsgate which was depriving the local chippies of supplies just when there was a flood of idle, hungry cats into the neighbourhood; and now there was pressure on long dormant socialists and trades' unionists around the country to support the industrial action.   For the baying Press the flying pickets were the last straw.   Not that, for the most part, they did much flying.    One group did have the use, where appropriate, of a Dragon Rapide loaned by a sympathetic pilot from Duxford, but mostly they were utilising a small fleet of  ex- YANKEE COACH LINES INC. GAR WOOD  Model EFI motor coaches, liberated from a stranded container ship in Tilbury Dock and reinforced against police truncheons.

Limehousesailortown

Limehousesailortown does not do politics - sailortown exists for the sailor.   Whilst the ships are in dock unloading their cargo their mariners and ships cats scurry ashore.   After weeks at sea battling with the elements, cooped together in small, over-familiar groups they come onto land, where ever they may be in the world, with a little money in their pockets and a desire to be entertained.   Just beyond the dock gates they find dance halls and music halls, ale houses and catnip dens, brothels and night clubs.   They are enticed by ice-cream vans, burger bars, winkle stalls and pie-'n-mash tents.   Juke-boxes blare, fish and chips sizzle and dour missionaries fret after their souls.
Westwards along Ratcliff Highway the stews and doss houses peter out to be replaced by wholesale warehouses stuffed with pepper and cinnamon, teas and coffees,  wines, spirits, carpets and beds, monkeys, macaws and the contraband wares of smuggler and river pirate - produce not fanfared on the signs above the doors.   At the Highway's western end, dingy curiosity shops, junk shops proclaiming themselves to be antique emporia, ships' chandlers and the tagareen stores of the bum-boat men huddle together between the river and the soup kitchens and meeting halls of Whitechapel.   Whitechapel does do politics.


Boz and Phoebles stopped for a light lunch in the catnip den that occupies the four floors downstairs from their bedsit.   Snowdrop was singing a selection of songs from  Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and should probably have stuck to juggling, but she was accompanied by Sam on upright and Mouse Jackson on tenor sax, they were really quite good, as was the eel pie and mustard ice-cream.   Once fortified, the ginger pair set off towards Wapping and beyond to Whitechapel - for a little under-cover detective work.
Toynbee Hall, that vicarage-gothic edifice which might well have seen William Morris and Peter Kropotkin pass through its doors in times gone by was, this day, hosting a debate on Unity, Co-operation and World Solutions to World Problems.   A degree of disagreement was beginning to emerge.   Old Labour was present with a Yorkshire ex-colliery brass band; Marxists and Leninists and Trotskyists and Maoists were in dispute over the subjects for discussion, procedural details and fillings for the sandwiches; La Columna, in red neckerchiefs were acting as unofficial bouncers.   Huddled in small yet noisy groups and eyeing each other suspiciously were collectivist-anarchists, mutualist-anarchists, communist-anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, anarcho-surrealists, Situationists and The Brick Lane Zapatistas.   Consuella Starcluster was there with her tambourine, and the Kittens of Chaos had brought along a breakaway anarcha-feminist chapter of the WI who were starting to heckle.    Boz and Phoebles, thinly disguised in matching 'Red Ed' t-shirts, cloth caps and mufflers, slipped unobtrusively into the hall and, with backs to the wall, quietly observed.   The discord was beginning to spread to a gathering crowd outside in Commercial Street and scuffles were breaking out.


Round the corner in Angel Alley a soap box had been set up outside the offices of the Freedom Press.   White cats in very dark glasses guarded its corners like Trafalgar Square lions and Slasher McGoogs had mounted it to address an unenthusiastic crowd.
"Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF:
Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides
The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides."
There was silence until one of the sinister white cats began to clap pointedly.   There was a ripple from the audience followed by a Whoop and a couple of Yeahs.   The front two rows of uncomprehending felinity were made up of feckless alley cats of assorted shapes, sizes and colours, but behind them was a press of black and white ships' cats and their docker cousins.   These toms were politically aware and wanted to be roused.   Slasher stepped up the rhetoric.


Early next morning began the first ever mass strike of ships' cats.   Vessels without cats could not sail, the docks clogged up with stranded shipping and new arrivals rusted at anchor in the roads; cargos rotted and rats ran wild.   Dockland fell eerily silent.

Interesting Times

Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk, probably a little too loud in the earphones of his i-pod - Googleberry was lying on his back on the lawn, legs akimbo, soaking up the rays.   An over excited Strawberry was urgently trying to get through above the pounding strains of Pink Floyd, "We've had a semaphore from Limehousesailortown.   Boz says there's a mood for revolution on the air."
"Googleberries don't do revolution.   Someone feed me a grape."   Someone did.   It tasted unexpectedly fruity and he spat it out.   "Perhaps a fishy-snack-treat would be better... and a glass of sherbet."


Something came between Googleberry and the sun, its shadow growing as it descended.   Gently a shiny new, royal blue Cierva C.19 with a white saltire painted on its tail landed on the grass a safe distance from the sunbathing cats.   It's engine coughed into silence and down clambered a slightly tubby, snub winged bird in leather flying jacket and helmet, goggles, short legged jodphurs and tight fitting lace-up boots.   The autogyro was a gift from the grateful Scottish people and Ferdy wanted to show it off.
"You two coming to the big festival in Hyde Park?   I can squeeze you both into the front seat."
"Norralf!" cried Strawberry, sensing another adventure, "How about you, Googleberry?"
"Too much effort, old man." replied the recumbent feline, "Just leave the cool-bag of ginger beer within my reach, and bring me back an ice-cream."
Strawberry was already scrabbling into the passenger seat as Ferdy kicked the engine into life.   Pulling his goggles down, he engaged the clutch to start the rotor turning.   Opening the throttle and accompanied by a satisfactory roar from the single Armstrong Siddeley Genet Major radial engine they bounced briefly across the lawn and were airborne. Ferdy piloted the little craft high above the M3 into West London and then headed for the patch of green that was Hyde Park.   They dropped down into the gyro park close by the Serpentine.   The festival was vast, a riot of colour and incredibly noisy.   It had been organised by the government to arouse a patriotic fervour in the population at a time of uncertainty and no little hardship.   The newspapers were full of praise for the enterprise; on the television and radio, programme after programme covered the events; and the weather had, so far, been perfect.   There was a steam fairground with flashing lights, competing music from wheezing mechanical organs and squealing teenagers.   A central arena hosted displays by motorcycle teams, police dogs and, currently, stiff, black uniformed soldiers mounting horse drawn field-gun carriages that wove and scissored with thundering hooves and clanking harness to yet more music.   At a safe distance there were ornithopter rides and balloon rides, once round the park for five guineas.   A military marching band in white pith helmets played... marches, in front of a stage from which, periodically, politicians, dignitaries and popular celebrities gave rousing speeches.   Almost everyone in the crowd had a small union flag on a stick which they waved whenever it seemed appropriate.   In fact the national flag was to be seen everywhere, across the stage, flying over marquees and stalls, painted, it seemed, on every flat surface.   Even the hot dog sellers, attracted to this event from all over the European Union, flew union flags above their stands.


Strawberry made a bee-line for the fair, closely followed by Ferdinand.   The Whees, Aahs and Oohs grew in intensity until they swamped the senses and somewhere a steam calliope squeaked out a confused rendition of Jerusalem.   The duo rushed past the big wheel, which was not all that big - a small wheel in fact - and past two garish, guilded carousels with freshly painted and fierce eyed gallopers, past the Wall of Death to the new and experimental steam dodgems - only to find they had been shut down indefinitely since a boiler explosion on one of the cars had led to injury and the threat of litigation.   Ferdy was crestfallen, but Strawberry spotted a Helter-Skelter towering in red and white candy stripes beyond a gently idling showman engine.   Clutching a mat he dashed up the inside and whizzed down the outside, and then he did it again, then went again, and went again, and again, and again, and again...   As he landed at the bottom of the slide, slithering and tumbling for the umpteenth time Ferdy snatched the mat from him.
"Enough!"
"There's the Shamrock, lets go on the Shamrock."   Strawberry pointed towards the Steam Yachts, the ultimate adrenaline ride.   It was rumoured that a steam yacht had killed, more than once, towards the end of the nineteenth century. 
"Lets find Ginsbergbear, he is giving a poetry reading at one of the fringe events."   But on their way they saw that the prime minister was making a speech and stayed to hear it.  It was bland.
"Look," Ferdy nudged Strawberry. "now that's interesting."
Behind the speaker, unobtrusive, yet seated where he would miss nothing, was The Media Oligarch, infamous subject of one of Slasher McGoogs' more colourful broadsides.   He had, in his youth, been the white persian cat playing alongside Donald Pleasence in You Only Live Twice and his real name was rumoured to be Mr Fluffy.   He did not notice the pair (Why would he?), but his chilling, cold eyed smile set the fur and feathers bristling along their spines.


To the east, out beyond the city, a very different form of gathering was taking place.   And this had been the subject of Bozzy's now forgotten warning.