'Barman,' hailed Derek. 'Barman, please, barman.'

Next up upon the rostrum was a poetess. She was not a fat moustached poetess who was grateful for it. She was a young and beautiful and slim poetess who could afford to be choosy.

She recited a poem about her cat called Mr Willow-Whiskers. Who was apparently her furry little soulmate.

Kelly was forced to return to the ladies and lose the rest of her supper. At length she returned, still radiant, to the bar.

'That's definitely enough for me,' she said. ' "Mr Willow-Whiskers with his soul of crimson sunset". That was enough to make anyone throw up.'

'The pimply youths seemed to like it,' said Derek. 'They're asking for her autograph.'

'I've never been comfortable with poetry,' said Kelly. 'It's either well meaning, but bad, or beautifully constructed, but unintelligible. I quite like limericks though, have you ever heard the one about the young man from Buckingham?'

'I have,' said Derek. 'It's truly obscene.’

‘Well, I'm off. Enough is enough is enough.’

‘I'm up next,' said Derek. 'Please stay until I'm done.'

Kelly smiled. 'And your poem will be about sex, will it?'

Derek grinned. 'I've been working on my delivery. The way I see it, with performance poetry, it's not so much what you say, as the way you say it. My poems aren't actually rude, but I inject into them a quality of suggestiveness which gives them the appearance of being extremely risque.'

'Derek,' said Kelly. 'We're friends now, aren't we?’

‘Yes,' said Derek nodding. 'I think we are.’

‘Then as your friend, allow me to say that you are a complete and total prat. No offence meant.'

'And none taken, I assure you. But you just wait until you hear my poem. It involves the use of the word "plinth", which as everybody knows, is the sexiest word on Earth.’

‘Plinth?' said Kelly.

'My God,' said Derek. 'Say it again.'

A round of applause went up as Mr Melchizedec, Brentford's milkman in residence, concluded his poem 'Oh wot a loverly pair of baps'. It didn't include the word 'plinth', but as his style of delivery owed an homage to the now legendary Max Miller, the two Olds, Pete and Vic, were now rolling about on the floor, convinced that they had just heard the filthiest poem in the world.

'Check this out,' said Derek, grinning at Kelly and pushing his way through the crowd towards the rostrum.

Kelly yawned and looked at her watch. She'd let Derek do his thing, then she'd get an early night in. She wanted to look her best for her first day at Mute Corp, tomorrow.

Derek mounted the rostrum and smiled all over the crowd.

The crowd didn't seem that pleased to see him, although Kelly overheard a fat poetess with a moustache whisper to her friend, a poetess of not dissimilar appearance, that 'he looks like he's up for it'.

'Thank you,' said Derek, to no-one in particular. 'This is a poem dedicated to a lady. She's a very special lady. She doesn't know that she's a very special lady, but to me she is.'

'What's her name?' called out Old Pete, lately helped up from the floor.

'That's my secret,' said Derek.

'I'll bet it's this bird here,' said Old Vic, pointing towards Kelly. 'The bird with the nice charlies.'

Kelly glared pointy daggers, Old Vic took to cowering.

'The poem is untitled,' continued Derek.

'So what's it called?' Old Pete called.

'It doesn't have a tide.'

'A poem should have a title,' said Old Vic. 'Or at least a rank. We all had ranks in the prisoner-of-war camp.'

'Yeah,' called a pimply youth. 'You were all a bunch of rankers.'

The barman (who had been conversing in Brentford Auld Speke to a wandering bishop, down from Orton Goldhay for the annual congress of wandering bishops that was held in the function room above the Four Horsemen public house) shouted out, 'Oi! We'll have no trouble here.'

'It should have a title,' said Old Vic. 'It should!'

'All right,' said Derek. 'It's called "Sir Untitled Poem", OK?'

Kelly looked at her watch once more. Perhaps she should just go.

'"Sir Untitled Poem,'" said Derek, launching into 'Sir Untitled Poem'.

As Kelly had feared, 'Sir Untitled Poem' was pants. It was one of those excruciating love sonnets that lonely teenage boys compose when all alone in their bedrooms, and then make the mistake (only once!) of reciting to their very first girlfriend on their very first date.

It would, however, possibly have ranked as just another poem of the evening, had not something occurred during its reciting.

It was something truly dire and it put a right old damper on the evening. So truly dire, in fact, was it, that the wandering bishop, who had been chatting with the barman, found himself very much the man of the moment, several pimply youths found themselves in the loving arms of fat moustachioed poetesses, and Old Vic finally found another subject worthy of a poem.

Not that he would recite it at the Brentford Poets for a while. What with the Arts Centre being closed for extensive refurbishment, what with all the mayhem and destruction and suchlike.

But before this truly dire event occurs, as it most certainly must, it will be necessary for us to take a rather radical step and return to the past, so that the truly dire event might be truly understood.

We must return to the evening before last.

To the cottage hospital and the bed of Big Bob Charker.

The time is eight of the evening clock.

And Big Bob isn't happy.

Big Bob Charker lay upon his bed of pain. Not that he was aware of any pain. He wasn't. Big Bob was not aware that his nose had been broken, nor that he had suffered extensive bruising, a degree of laceration and a fractured left big toe.

He was not alone in his ignorance of the left big toe injury, the doctors at the cottage hospital had missed that one too.

Big Bob Charker was aware of nothing whatever at all.

If he had been capable of any awareness whatsoever he would have been aware that his last moments of awareness were of his awareness vanishing away. Of everyday objects becoming strange and alien. Of colour and sound becoming things of mystery, of speech becoming meaningless. Of everything just going.

But Big Bob was unaware.

Big Bob lay there, eyes wide open, staring at nothing at all. Staring at nothing and knowing nothing. Nothing whatever at all.

Dr Druid stared down at his patient. 'I hate to admit this,' he told a glamorous nurse. 'But this doesn't make any sense to me at all.'

'Could it be conjunctivitis?' asked the nurse, who had recently come across the word in a medical dictionary and had been looking for an opportunity to use it.

'No,' said Dr Druid, sadly shaking his head.

'What about scrapie then?'

'I don't think so,' said the doctor.

'What about thrush?' asked the nurse, who had more words left in her.

'Shut up,' said the doctor.

Pearson Clarke (son of the remarkable Clive and brother to the sweetly smelling Bo-Jangles Clarke, who bathed four times a day and sang country songs about trucks to those prepared to listen) grinned at the nurse and then at Dr Druid. Pearson Clarke was an intern with ideas above his station. His station was South Haling and most of his ideas were well above that. 'You should run a brain scan,' said Pearson Clarke.

'I have run a brain scan,' said Dr Druid. 'It shows that this patient has absolutely no brain activity whatsoever.'

'That's impossible,' said Pearson Clarke. 'Even deep coma patients have brain activity. They dream.'

'This man doesn't dream,' said Dr Druid. 'Nor do the other two patients, the driver and the woman with the unpronounceable name.'