“For tonight? You’ve done it all?”

“You won’t be disappointed. We should be able to raise enough money to pay the team’s wages for the next couple of months.” John sauntered up to the bar.

“If I possessed a hat, I would take it off to you,” said Jim.

John Omally saluted him. “You do your job and I’ll do mine,” said he.

“You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you, John?”

John ordered two pints from Mr Rumpelstiltskin, who didn’t waste his time asking for the money. “We’ll pull this off,” John told Jim.

“I wish I shared your confidence.”

“You just wait until tonight.”

“It’s going to be a good bash, is it?”

“I think I can promise you,” said John Omally, raising his pint, “a night to remember.”

“Kenneth More starred in A Night to Remember,” said Jim Pooley. “It was all about the sinking of the Titanic, if I remember correctly.”

P.P. Penrose – Brentford’s most famous son, creator of Lazlo Woodbine, the twentieth century’s most beloved fictional genre detective, polymath and genius, and a man who would die before his time in a freak accident involving a vacuum cleaner and a pot of fish paste – had been big in the sixties.

In the music industry.

P.P. – or Vain Glory, as those who knew then knew him – had been the lead singer of that seminal sixties prog-rock ensemble The Flying Starfish From Uranus. Who, through a number of personnel changes (due to what is known in “the biz” as “musical differences”) later became The Plasma Jets, and later still Citizen’s Arrest, and later later still Dada Black Sheep. And later later later still, and probably most famously of all, the seventies supergroup The Rock Gods.

And although old rockers really should know when to call it a day, consign the Wem Vendetta speakers to the garage, fold up the stage clothes that no longer look quite so convincing now that snake hips have swelled from adder to anaconda, they really can’t.

There is simply too much of a buzz to be had from getting up on the stage and doing it one more time.

Being an author is a fine enough thing, of course. There are few finer callings. It is a precious thing, a special thing, to bring joy into the hearts of readers. Who could ask for anything more?

Well.

There is that buzz.

That buzz that can only really be attained by being up on stage bawling into a microphone and working up a good old sweat.

And there is the “woman thing”. The “fan-woman thing”. Because, let’s face it, how sexy is it being an author?

Well, obviously quite sexy – some might say very sexy – but never on the scale of being a rock star. And call it weird and wonderful, or call it something else entirely (possibly due to the water and the direction it goes down the plughole) but there are very few rock bands (given, of course, that the members actually manage to go on living) that don’t continue to go on playing.

Certainly they may be reduced to the pub circuit, or one of those terrible multi-band retro tours that always seem to involve Nick Heywood or Tony Hadley somewhere on the bill.[14] But they do go on playing.

Folk do remember them.

Folk do turn up for the gigs.

Which is where the “fan-woman thing” comes into it. (Or vice versa!)

Many of the giggling, screaming girlies who dampened the seats in those bygone days of slim-hippedness have evolved into rather fine-looking middle-aged ladies, most of whom have also taken that other revolutionary step from married woman to divorcée. And they do tend to turn up at the reunion concerts.[15]

Which can be pretty cool if you’re a middle-aged (and several times divorced) author who’s looking to pull.

It had been far less difficult than Omally had supposed to enlist the services of The Rock Gods for the Brentford United Benefit Night. Nor, indeed, several other name bands from the past.

“Don Omally?”

A large and horny hand fell upon the shoulder of Omally, who was sitting in his office at The Stripes Bar, and the son of Eire looked up to gaze upon its owner.

“Tim McGregor,” said the owner of the hand, now putting it forward for a shake. John Omally shook this hand.

A big hand it was, and horny with it. “John Omally,” he said. “I was speaking to you earlier, I believe.”

“On the Nina[16],” said Mr McGregor. “I’m the road manager of The Rock Gods. I’ve a van full of mosh[17]. I’ll be needing someone to give me a hand unloading it.”

“Jim here will give you a hand,” said Omally.

“Hang about,” said Pooley, who was lounging near at hand with glass in hand and didn’t feel too handy. “I’m the manager of a football team, not a roadie.”

“Look at the time.” John Omally displayed a wristlet watch before Jim. It was a brand-new wristlet watch. It had been given to John by Mr Ratter, who ran the jeweller’s shop in the High Street, in return for an endorsement on the team’s shirts. “It is six-thirty of the evening clock. I have so much here still to organise.” John made expansive gestures.

Jim took a glance about The Stripes Bar. Aside from himself, John, Mr McGregor and Mr Rumpelstiltskin, it was somewhat deserted and looked no more in need of organising than it generally did.

“I can’t do it all myself,” said Mr McGregor. “If it’s too much trouble, then stuff it. We’re doing this for free and if you can’t be arsed to—”

“It’s all right.” Jim put up his hands. “I’d be pleased to assist you. The Rock Gods, did you say? The real Rock Gods?”

“How many Rock Gods do you know?”

“Well,” said Jim, “there’s—”

“Don’t even start,” John told him. “Just go and help the man unload.”

Pooley hastened, without haste, to oblige.

The van stood in the car park outside. It was a very knackered-looking old van, a van that had clearly seen a lot of action. The words “THE ROCK GODS” had been spray-painted on the sides, although some wag had scrawled out the letter “R” and substituted a “C” Jim viewed the van and sighed. A life on the road with a rock-and-roll band, that really would be something. Mr McGregor flung open the rear doors to reveal a considerable amount of mosh.

“Coo,” said Jim. “Do you really need all that stuff?”

“What would you prefer, mate? Unplugged? A bunch of Marshas[18] sitting on stools, strumming acoustic guitars?”

“Perish the thought,” said Jim. “But it all looks rather heavy.”

“Yeah, don’t it?” Mr McGregor smiled upon the heavy-looking equipment. “And heavy makes you happy, as we used to say.”

Jim tried to smile upon Mr McGregor. There was a fair amount of this fellow to smile upon. He had very big hair, which was very dark and very tied back, and he was dark of eyebrow and long and plaited of beard. And he was generously muscled: big and burly were his shoulders, large and rippling his biceps. And all the bits that were visible, bulging from his vest and shorts, were colourfully tattooed with designs of the Celtic persuasion.

“What are you smilling at?” asked Mr McGregor. “You ain’t a Leo[19], are you?”

“Certainly not,” said Jim. “I’m an Piscean.”

“Then help me fish out that Marshall amp and we’ll get on swimmingly.”

And so, puffing and blowing and trying very hard not to complain at all, Jim Pooley helped Tim McGregor unload the van.

“You see,” said Tim in reply to some question that Jim hadn’t asked him, “it all gets a bit tricky. Mr Penrose wasn’t the original lead singer of The Rock Gods. That was Cardinal Cox.”