John shrugged. “Do I really have any choice?” he asked.

“You always have a choice.”

John turned towards Jim. “I know you are hardly compus mentis,” said John, “but what are your thoughts on this?”

“Zzzzzzzz,” said Jim Pooley.

Jim Pooley awoke to a sunshiny Saturday morning.

Jim Pooley awoke to find Gammon smiling down upon him.

“Wah!” went Jim. “What are you doing in my boudoir?”

“Coffee and croissants, sir,” said Gammon, removing the silver dome from an eighteenth-century croissant dish and wafting delicious smells in Jim’s direction.

“What am I doing here?” Jim asked, a-blinking and a-rubbing of his eyes. “I am at the professor’s house and …” Jim did pullings at himself. “These aren’t my pyjamas,” he continued. “My pyjamas have the A Team on them.”

“You imbibed a little too freely last night, sir. The professor was pleased to put you up.”

“Oh,” said Jim. And, “How kind,” said Jim. And, “Pour me a coffee then, please,” said Jim also.

Gammon obliged and then bowed himself from the bedroom.

Jim sat up and sipped coffee.

“Imbibed too freely?” Jim shook his head from side to side. He didn’t have a hangover. What time had he and John left The Stripes Bar? Jim now cocked his head upon one side. What time had he actually arrived at The Stripes Bar? And what had actually happened at the Benefit Night at The Stripes Bar?

Jim Pooley made a very grave face. He had absolutely no memory of the evening before.

Scoop Molloy’s memories of the evening before had been put down upon paper even before the evening before was done. Scoop had viewed the smoke and the exploding exit doors and the fleeing folk through the rear window of Norman’s van in the car park, where he and Peg had retired to make the beast with two backs after John had disturbed their earlier tryst outside the fire exit. Scoop had been forced to excuse himself from the frantic coitus. He was a professional. The news always had to come first.

So to speak.

And upon returning to the offices of the Brentford Mercury with many pages of purple prose, he had been granted that moment so beloved of newsmen throughout the ages: that moment when they can cry, “Hold the front page!”

And, to his chagrin, Scoop discovered that the front page was already being held for information that was coming in regarding a lock-up garage in Abaddon Street that had apparently been destroyed by a terrorist bomb. The headline “BIN LADEN ATTACK UPON BRENTFORD” was already being set up in six-inch Times Roman lettering.

“You’ll have to put your piece on the sports page,” Badger Beaumont, the Mercury’s inebriate theatre critic, told him. “I was there, at the scene of the outrage, walking my old brown dog, and I got my headline in first.”

“But I have ‘HUNDREDS FLEE IN TERROR’,” said Scoop, “and I saw all kinds of weird stuff going on in The Stripes Bar after the fleeing was done. I peeped in through the doorway.”

“Sorry,” said Beaumont. “That’s journobiz, I guess.”

“But,” said Scoop. “But …”

“Butter?” asked Professor Slocombe. “For your toast, Jim?”

Jim now sat, with John, at the professor’s breakfasting table in his marvellous conservatory. It was one of those wonderful Victorian jobbies with all the cast-iron fiddly bits and the brass handles on the walls that you turn to engage complicated mechanisms which open upper windows. And there was all manner of exotic foliage and rare blooms perfuming the air, and it was all very blissful.

And Jim was in a state of some confusion.

“I can’t remember anything,” said Jim, accepting butter for his toast that he might enjoy a second breakfast, as in the manner of Hobbits. “I remember going home for a bath and that’s it. Waking up here this morning is the next thing I remember.”

Omally cast a cautious glance towards the professor.

A knowing one was returned to him.

“I expect it will all come back to you in time,” Omally told Jim, although John’s fingers were crossed beneath the table. “But suffice it to say, it was a most profitable night. We took almost two thousand pounds on the door alone. I haven’t checked the bar takings yet, but we have more than enough to pay the team for the next few weeks.”

“Oh my God,” said Jim. “The team – did they all get drunk?”

“No,” said John. “I told you, I—”

“You told me what?”

“Nothing,” said John. “The team all drank the Team Special ale I had the brewery lay on for them. It was non-alcoholic. They’ll be fine this morning.”

“Where are my clothes?” Jim asked.

“I’m having them cleaned for you, sir.” Gammon poured Jim further coffee. “You were a bit sick.”

“Oh my God once more,” said Jim. “Not here? I’m so sorry, Professor.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Jim. You acquitted yourself in a gentlemanly manner.”

“But I can’t understand why I can’t remember anything.”

“It’s all for the best, Jim. Trust me on this.” John raised his coffee cup to Jim. “Think only of today, Jim. Today is going to be a big day for Brentford United.”

Jim felt his stomach knotting. The prospect of the forthcoming match was terrifying in the extreme.

“Do I have to go?” Jim asked.

“You certainly do,” said Professor Slocombe. “But have no fear, I will be going with you.”

“You will?” said Jim.

“I will, and I will be sitting beside you on the bench.”

“That makes me feel a good deal better. What about the bus, John?”

“All arranged,” said John Omally, dabbing a serviette about his laughing gear. “Big Bob Charker will pick us up from your place at ten.”

“Will I have to walk home in these PJ’s?” Jim asked.

“I will fetch you some appropriate day wear, sir,” said Gammon.

And the new day came to Brentford.

To find many in the borough most unwilling to greet it.

The “STRIPES BAR HOLOCAUST”, as it would come to be known due to the six-inch Times Roman headline on the rear sports page of the day’s edition of the Brentford Mercury, would linger long in the memories of those who had been there to experience it. And those who had been there would speak of their experiences again and again over the coming weeks, each lingering long upon the gory details and even longer upon whatever deeds of personal bravery they claimed to have performed.

But upon this particular morning, all concerned were laying long in bed, trying to sleep the whole thing off.

Big Bob Charker, Brentford’s tour-bus driver, had always been an early riser and today was no exception. He was already at the depot polishing his bus.

The depot was more of a shed than a depot. In fact, it was a shed – a shed large enough to house a bus, but a shed more so than less. It was an aged shed that had once been an engine shed in the days when steam trains still ran from Brentford Station, days that were now far gone.

The yard, ex-railways and now the property of Brentford Magical History Tours, Ltd. looked just the way such a yard should look: decoratively decked out in rusted ironwork of the corrugated persuasion and flanked around by tall fences topped with razor-wire. A sign on the gate read “BEWARE THE SAVAGE DOGS THAT ROAM THESE PREMISES BY NIGHT” and a great many of those corroding oil drums that always look as if they must contain something very, very dangerous indeed.

Big Bob Charker was a man of biblical proportions and spoke in a manner appropriate to his stature.

“Dost thou truly think the team will win through to the FA Cup Final?” he asked Periwig Tombs, the mechanic, who was wiping his hands upon an oily rag, as mechanics will do whenever they are given the chance.