Chapter Six: in which, to much surprise, the Davizes Town Council pull off a viable solution, and we complete this general silliness once and for all.

“You might be right, for once, man,” Briggs gulped as he stood outside the Davizes Town Hall with his senior chief councillor, the mighty Yellowhead. “They seem more like the guardians of the galaxy then just the Guardians of Davizes!”

“Nonsense,” Yellowhead spurted, with his hands on his hips, staring at the great building. “It was but a joke, not that I’m terribly good at them I’ll be the first to admit, but the satire is in ironic overstatement; they believe they’re as powerful as the guardians of the galaxy, but far from it. They’re actually just a bunch of no-hoping conceited and arrogant do-gooders!”

“Oh, it’s just the way the town hall is hovering three foot above the ground with a lime green misty light beaming underneath it, is all,” replied Briggs. If he thought the circular design of the Davizes Town Hall resembled the archetypical flying saucer of 1950s B-movies, he did now it was as he said, hovering a foot off the ground with an eerie lime-green light below it.

“Do not allow their silly tricks to fool you, Briggs,” Yellowhead assured, “they are no more alien than I am Karl Marx.”

The fact a tractor beam had engulfed his superior, and was currently dragging him upwards towards the vast opening doors enlightened Briggs’ suspicion, yet it didn’t worry him any more than he thought it might.

“Do not fear, Briggs, neither attempt a rescue. It’s standard council procedure to apply a tractor-beam and hoist in any suspicious looking strangers,” Yellowhead assured further, “just another extravagant show of false power tripping! They use it to pull in anyone they suspect might be a challenge to their leadership. The devise was first pioneered by Noel Edmonds, off the telly.”

“Really?” Briggs reacted unsurprised, “You, like, sure it was him?”

“Looked like him,” Yellowhead asserted, “yes, same name, and same leftie trimmed grey beard. Even likes telly, put cameras all over town, but the irony is, they used his weapons against him when he signed up as the Labour Party candidate for town council elections, ha-ha!” Then he waved his fist at the building he was being forced up to, and shouted at it, “I’m as tory as you, you flipped out loons! I knew the transfer of obligations from county council to town council would go to your heads; you could’ve given your kids a splashpad, like the folk of Milksham, instead you spend it on this tomfoolery! We will take Pews Bond Wood for this; you’ll see if we don’t! Two hundred new homes for tory voters if you don’t put me down right now!”

The tractor beam continued pulling him inwards to the great doors of the town hall, as they opened to accept him. A second tractor beam pulled Briggs in too, it was rather alarming, he very near dropped his spliff. “Like wow, I’m just like, floating man; pass my meds!”

“Three hundred houses!” Yellowhead threatened, “and, and an English Defence League HQ if you don’t put me down immediately, I’m warning you!”

With the roach resting casually on his chin, Briggs asked a scrawny green alien at the door, “have you, like, got a light, man?” but all the creature did was lower his halberd and inaudibly communicate his order for them to follow him.

“Telepathy!” Yellowhead grumbled, “I ask you, what other clichés do the Guardians have at their disposal? Pathetic showy arrogance!” And then he addressed the alien, “we have telepathy at county council level too. You’re not showing us anything new!”

In a vast futuristic hall, sat around a Perspex table on high back chairs, six giant green alien beings with oversized piercing black oval eyes and even more oversized brains, the veins of which were pulsating. Around the edges of them another six nerdy human beings also sat, wearing patterned cardigans and spectacles with thin chains. In unison the aliens spoke in a deep, haunting tone, “we are the Guardians of the Galaxy!”

“Told you so,” Briggs boasted.

“We’re not!” added one of the human councillors, “we are the few conservatives trying to take over the independents, and we’ll never get there if I fail to insist, we must push on with the meeting!”

A rotund fellow bravely stood up, “I’m only here because I have a non-bias Facebook page with over a thousand likes!” Everyone in the hall ignored him.

“Firstly, I’d like to raise my point once more,” the original human councillor continued, “that they are not the Guardians of anything such, they are the so-say Guardians of Davizes, and nothing more!” This amused Yellowhead. It was the first time he had felt any connection to this place.

“We are the Guardians of the Galaxy!” they bellowed again in unison.

“You are guardians of nothing more than a few trees in the town’s market place,” Yellowhead stated, “you pathetic oaths!”

“Okay,” the aliens confessed, “we were guardians of the galaxy, from a planet where trees are sacred. We came here to save the trees, but we liked it so much, we stayed. Something in the water.”

“Like duh, cow dung!” Briggs giggled.

“Now listen,” Yellowhead sternly addressed the board. “Something is terribly amiss here. Your consistency has transformed into a leftie terrorist love-in festival and I don’t give a hoot what stupid game you think you’re playing, but it needs to stop with immediate effect!”

“Yeah, man,” Briggs added, “I reckon we’re in the wrong dimension!”

A county gent in a flat-cap stood up, “I have an objection, this is not on the agenda!”

Grouplike, the aliens gave great thought, and finally said unto Yellowhead, “your complaint will be put forth for discussion shortly. As I can confirm you are from an alternative dimension, just like independents and lefties, your priority to speak is lower than that of our right-wing residents. If you wish to make a point, you must follow the correct procedure. Fill out a complaint form, send it to your local councillor, who will forget about it for a month, then you must resend until they raise it at the monthly meeting, and the council will decide to take a vote on whether to hear it, then if they do, they take the vote and hear it, then it goes out for discussion. The results are published in the minutes and read at the next monthly meeting. Suggestions on how to solve it are discussed, voted on and discussed again. Then, after coffee, the council raises the point it’s been a while since the original complaint, and wonder if it’s all blown over, which hopefully it would have.”

“We, like, just wanted to know,” Briggs started, “if we’ve entered another dimension, or not, if you knew?”

“We have answered that,” they replied in unison. “and it is confirmed. I shall put the resolution to the issue on the agenda. If you would like to fill out a complaint form, send it to your local councillor, resend until they raise it at the monthly meeting, and the council will decide to take a vote on whether to hear it, then if they do, they take the vote and hear it, then it goes out for discussion. The results are published in the minutes and read at the next monthly meeting. Suggestions on how to solve it are discussed, voted on and discussed. Then, the council raises the point it’s been a while since the original complaint, and wonder if it’s all blown over, which hopefully it would have.”

“For the love of Adolf Hitler!” sighed Yellowhead.       

The aliens addressed the flat-cap country gent, “you may say your piece, Alf.”

“Oh, yes your highness,” Alf mumbled under his overgrown moustache. “I propose the building of a six-by-four shed in my back garden.”

“No chance!” interrupted Yellowhead, “as chief county councillor I take presidency over all here, and I say no, that land is, erm, protected, because of a rare breed of newts found there.”

“Yet in your own dimension, councillor Yellowhead,” the aliens retorted, “your council have passed the building contract for over five hundred houses on the very field behind Alf’s premises, precisely where the newts were discovered.”

“Poppycock!” Yellowhead blurted, “it’s the newts we want to protect, it has nothing to do with any such backhander from the building company I’ll receive. How dare you even suggest it! Now, our situation is far more urgent and I demand it takes priority!”

“We have other urgent matters on the agenda,” the aliens claimed. “Gavin wants an extension to his garage, and Mabel is hoping to campaign to clean the areas of interest road signs. Please, we must adhere to the schedule, I have outlined what you must do, do not anger the chair.”

“How can you, like, anger a chair?” Briggs giggled, “call it a pouffe?!”

The rotund man stood up and pleaded before the Guardians, “please, I beg of you, spare my fellow conservative any pain, he know not what he say, he know not what he do. He hasn’t even got a Facebook page.”

“If my point is not heard soon,” Yellowhead demanded, “my head will explode with the influx of leftism bureaucracies, there is only so much utter piffle my mind can take. I say burn Alf’s shed to the ground, Gavin clearly wants an extension to his manhood, and I would smash Mabel in the chops with a filthy area of interest road sign!”

“Then,” the Guardians spoke, “let us pass this notion, so we can move forward.”

“Whatever! Just get on with it.”

“Permission for Alf’s shed is passed. You may build your shed Alf,” the Guardians said.

Alf was grateful and stood down.

“Now, Mr Yellowhead,” they addressed our hero. “I shall call you, as your councillor title means nothing here. Your monkey is correct when it surmised you slipped into another dimension when you fell through a porthole. The idea of inter-dimension tourism is too much for your council to accept, so they disguised them as potholes many years ago. The multiverse is real, hence the obscene number of potholes. We can, and regularly do pass through the portholes, but we cannot send you back through them. Not without the cognisant of the full council, a subject which could take decades following aforementioned procedures.”

“That I don’t doubt!” Yellowhead stated. “Miltshire Council could have closed twelve care homes by now!” 

“It’s the interfering conservatives in our council,” the Guardians claimed, “they’ll claim to be doing something about an issue, but if there’s nothing in it for them….”

“Oh, but there is,” Yellowhead affirmed, “to get me off their backs! How they, and you for that matter, let things get so utterly low and leftie is beyond me. Do you realise there is graffiti on the walls of the Corn Exchange?”

“It is not known as that here,” one conservative councillor added.

“No,” informed Briggs, “they call it the Porn Exchange here. Blooming marvellous, spent hours in there the other day.”

“The graffiti is by a top artist known as Banky. His pieces are highly sort after in the art world. He is the only bank the council trust,” the Guardians explained.

“Filth! Get rid of it, paint over it immediately!” Yellowhead demanded.

“We would rather proceed with the process of getting you back to your own dimension,” the aliens sighed, “you don’t fit in here.” It was a hard pill to swallow, to accept you fit in less on your home planet than a bunch of aliens, but Yellowhead was that thick-skinned, and never really watched sci-fi anyway.

“Good,” he stated, “and what do you imbeciles propose to do that, being you said you cannot send us back?”

“Not through dimensions, no,” the aliens replied, “but we can send you back in time, back to the point just before you fell into the porthole. We can send a carrier pigeon to give you a message, a message you yourself will write in your own handwriting, fully convincing your previous self not to enter the pothole. You will have no memory of this ever happening, see?”

Yellowhead thought about it and was shocked not to see any issue with it. In fact, it sounded better than he wished for, not knowing anything about this sick world full of lefties. Even in his own dimension he had some keyboard warrior disciples of Corbyn, and but it was nothing compared to this. “Yes, that sounds, adequate. Briggs will fill in the finer details.”

“I’m, like staying here, man.”

“You most certainly are not, Briggs, will escort me back to our own dimension and through a series of painful electroshock treatments and Morrisey songs on repeat, you will reform back to a conservative attitude and pledge your allegiance to Sir Boris Johnson, and beg that he forgives you for your sins. And you can remove those nipple rings too!”

The rotund fellow waddled forward with a pen and paper. “Write your message to yourself on here. It will be in strict confidence what you chose to write, but you should refrain from explaining why. To provide information about the potholes to your former self could prove disastrous to the space time continuum and implode all known dimensions, including your own. Furthermore, and even more importantly, if you post any news of it on my Facebook page, I’ll ban you outright.”

“Petty Facebook group admins,” Yellowhead laughed in his face. “Give them an inch of responsibility and they think they’re Mark Zuckerberg. Just give me the paper, fatso.” Yellowhead thought for less than two seconds, then scribbled out a message to his former self. He rolled it into a scroll, tittered, and handed it back to the fellow. “Done! Now, how do you alien cretins propose to send us back in time?”

“Via a DeLorean which when it, like, hits 88mph,” Briggs anticipated, “we catch fire and travel through time, I’m hoping.”

“Are you kidding?” the Guardians frowned. “Hitting anything near 58mph on Miltshire roads is taking your life in your own hands! The likelihood of you falling into another porthole and into another dimension is virtually a given thing. We will do it by chanting a scared Guardian verse from ancient times, around the sacred pyramid of Albion Place.”

“Great,” Briggs said, “I’ll be able to smoke my last joint on the way. Care to partake, Yellow, it’ll make you mellow, or at least slightly mellower?”

“Have you completely lost your mind, Briggs?”

Briggs laughed, “I’m not the one with an alien tentacle stuck on my bonce!” Which was true, at least.

“Firstly,” one Guardian continued, reaching out a long tentacle and affixing it onto Yellowhead’s yellow forehead, “you must be implanted with the notion find love for your fellow man, and take heed of all god’s creatures, for they may hold a message for you. This will ensure you notice the pigeon is carrying a message. As a complete ignoramus towards all forms of life, there is a danger you will shoe it away.”

They marched down to Albion Place quite silently. Even Yellowhead was concerned about mind meddling aliens controlling him. He was usually the one controlling everyone else. Suddenly, after only a small chant, Briggs called out, “oh wow, far out! Just like, like, like dreaming, man!”

“Don’t be a dreamer, Briggs,” Yellowhead snarled but was unsure why he said it, “we don’t have a bottomless pit of funding.”

Briggs pulled the van over. The potholes here resembled an asteroid impact zone. “This will save us some pennies,” Yellowhead observed, “something to do other than blasted Zoom meetings. Cut out the middleman, Highways Agency are a hinderance on our budget,” he stated as he gulped Briggs’ Bollinger. “If a job’s worth doing…. Now, get out and spray a yellow circle around that one!”

Briggs got out to paint the circle, despite not be trained. Yellowhead followed suit, to fart. Briggs opened the van’s rear doors and climbed inside to fetch the spray paint canisters. Councillor Nora Fayes popped up from behind some road signs. Briggs jumped out of his skin. “Say anything to Yellowhead and I’ll do you!” she claimed, yielding a hunter’s dagger and pointing at him in a threatening manner. “You, kid,” she added, “are worth so much more than Yellowhead’s plaything. You will go up to the pothole, and you will fall into it, making it look like an accident. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Um, yes, I suppose,” Briggs confirmed, and he stepped out of the van. He looked rather flushed, but Yellowhead failed to notice it. Nora peaked through the gap of the van’s backdoors and startled.

She saw a gull, of all things. It had descended upon Yellowhead and was frantically fluttering around his head. He considered shoeing it off with his arm, when a random and unsolicited thought occurred to him: find love for your fellow man, and take heed of all god’s creatures, for they may hold a message for you.

Yellowhead questioned his own thoughts as he grabbed hold of the gull, mumbled something about leftie snowflakes invading his psyche via telepathy being the final straw, and yelped, “Nora! Where are you when we need you the most?!”

“Gull!” shouted Nora, bursting from the van and taking Yellowhead unsuspectingly. She ran directly at the bird with angry expression of hate and murder.

“Find love for your fellow man,” Yellowhead called, “and take heed of all god’s creatures.” And he pulled off a message attached to the gull’s leg, just in time before Nora pounced on it and bludgeoned it with the dagger. Blood filled her face as she buried it into to the dead bird, feeding off of its meat.

“It’s quite a deep one,” Briggs observed the pothole. “Maybe pop a cone in it?”

“Yes, yes, whatever!” belched Yellowhead, the kerfuffle and also, the fresh air taking effect on his drunkenness. “You are sick, woman!” he said as he ignored her from here on whence, and read the message.

Briggs dropped the cone in the centre of the pothole. It floated for a matter of seconds and then sank out of sight into the muddy puddle. “Oh, it is deep,” he noted.

“Get that cone out of there!” Yellowhead demanded as he retched up pheasant chunks. “We’ve not the cash lying around to lose a cone.”

Briggs hesitated, then attempted to straddle the puddle, but it was too large. His right foot went partly in, and so he naturally extended his left foot outwards into the centre. Next thing Yellowhead noted was Briggs completely disappearing under the water. “For the love of Thatcher!” he moaned. For on the note, it expressly told him, whatever he did he should not enter the pothole, in his own writing. On a footnote it said Briggs was a traitor, a leftie dissident, and should he fall in, not to concern himself too much about it. A further footnote, which was not in his handwriting apologised, for not having a carrier pigeon to hand, therefore they would have to make do with a gull.

Yellowhead pulled his phone from his pocket. “Yes, it’s me,” he reported, “yes, I will fill out the minutes to the last meeting as soon as I get back. Sorry? Yes, on a mission, yes. Look, this is an emergency, I need a new junior councillor sent out, one with some water wings.”

There was a cold silence as Yellowhead listened aghast to his superior. He tutted at Briggs’ stupidity, but supposed he asked for it, his naivety cost him his life out here. It was untamed territory, life was hard. He wasn’t completely inhumane, and he mourned the boy’s death for the best part of ten seconds. “What do you mean, the one I’ve got? He’s an idiot, sir, with all due respect.” He hung up, put the phone back in his pocket.

Briggs appeared from the opposite side of the van, strangely he wore different clothing, tighter and silver coloured.

“Ah, Briggs, good to see you, young fellow!” Yellowhead asserted. “Thought you was a goner for a second. But all’s well that ends well. It feels like some enormous mission has come to a final happy ending, despite all we’ve done is drunk some Bollinger, painted a yellow circle around a pothole and sung some flag-waving anthems. But,” he let out a huge belly-laugh, “what else is there to do in the day in the life of a Miltshire Councillor?!”

And, for this tale it was indeed the end. Yellowhead thought they’d collect their things and venture back to county hall, maybe strap the insane Nora to the roof rack. However, Briggs seemed distraught, he lobbed a flamethrower at Yellowhead, told him to point it at Nora and fire. Then he rushed into the van, took it into a spin, smashing Nora to the ground. He leapt from the van, dowsed it with petrol, lit it and jumped clean out of the blast zone.

Screaming, the silhouette of Nora in the centre of the blast, amidst a bellowing of black smoke could be seen. “Oh, jolly good show, Briggs, you’ve burned Nora alive. Imagine the paperwork now.”

“Blast her!” demanded Briggs as he ran for his life.

Yellowhead knotted his brow, “I think she’s toast, really……” then he stopped in his tracks, as the figure moved sharply towards him from the burning scene. It retained the shape of Councillor Nora Fayes, but was sparkling, like silver under flame. Red lasers appeared from her eyes and scanned the area, like a robot.

“Dear me,” Yellowhead exclaimed, “she was such a do-gooder, I feared she might turn into a leftie. But an ultramodern cyborg sent to kill me from some apocalyptic future, is nearly as bad.” He open-fired the flamethrower, but it barely left a scratch on her metallic body.

“Briggs, have we any nuclear arms at County Hall?” he asked, “could do with a couple.”

“I’m Briggs,” the man said, reaching out his hand as the robot approached them at speed, “but not the Briggs you know! Come with me, if you want to live!”

---

That’s all folks, I do hope you enjoyed our fictional fable; worked out alright in the end, kind of!

---

The Case of the Pam-Dimensional Pothole

Chapter Four: in which our heroes awake in unusual circumstances.

Recap: Can you stop asking me for a recap, and just read the chapters before this one? I got to keep going over the same shit, just because you cannot be bothered to keep up with the story, is that it? Look, just read the previous chapters, or wait for Spielberg to notice the movie potential of this humble fable, won’t you? I’m done with recaps.

There was something divinely erotic being one of thousands of workers in a foetus position, imbibing on one of the many lactating teats of a larvae queen with the head of Margaret Thatcher in a sado-masochistic pupae dungeon, at least to Councillor Yellowhead there was.

Hymenoptera knew their place in the nest and never questioned authority; he liked it here. When the lactose ran dry, they’d head out for duties without question. Though to Yellowhead feeding was sexually stimulating, he never wished for it to end. He yearned the Gyne would churn her pulp royal jelly once more, but with bellowing, unquestionable authority her words echoed around the chamber, “to those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-churn, I have only one thing to say: You churn if you want to. The lady’s not for churning!”

Yellowhead squirmed with excitement, near ejaculation, as she continued in a less conversant voice, “now, Mr Speaker, I suggest you wake up, wake up, WAKE UP!” Confusion to the alienness of the accent, saw off his climax, and he felt rejected despair. Yet, somewhere deep in an archive of Yellowhead’s mind, it had familiarity, as if from long lost past, another time, another realm.

Yellowhead’s mouth overwhelmingly tasted of mud, water spurted from deep down his oesophagus and sprayed from his lips. The light hurt his eyes as their lids unlocked involuntarily. The Thatcher Gyne fizzled out of reality, ignoring his pleas to stay, and the equivocal outline of a human head came into his focus. “Wake up!” the voice came again, this time he recognised it.

“Get off me this minute, Briggs,” Yellowhead commanded, “you necrophiliac homosexual!”

“You lost breathing,” Briggs pointed out, highly tense, “and had no pulse…. I……”

Yellowhead pulled his torso up and rested on his elbows, “did you perform CPR on me, Briggs, just answer me that?”

“Sir,” Briggs implored, “there was nothing else I……”

“You are a sexual predator, Briggs, a sexual predator of corpses, and I was your prey!”

“It was necessary,” Briggs pleaded his cause, “there was nothing else I could have done to save you, and sir, I did it, I saved your life!”

Yellowhead stood up as Briggs scrambled away from him. Remaining on the tarmac he looked up to his superior, feeling the wrath of his outraged expression. But Yellowhead took a moment to compose himself, and sighed. In a whisper he told Briggs, “young man, tell no one of this, for as long as we both shall live. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes, sir, oh yes,” Briggs whimpered, “I’m just glad you’re alive!”

Yellowhead bit his bottom lip, it still tasted of sludge. “Quite; well, I must say, I mean, I find it difficult, erm, in a situation, I find, you know, at times I, and there are times, many, of which the erm, timing is not right, but let me say, if I can, that, I, damn, Briggs this is hard, so very hard for me, to, you know, find the right words, but yes, I erm, I thank you, Briggs, for, you know, saving my life!” He sunk in his own admission and self-loathing.

Briggs beamed a smile from ear to ear.

“Look, Briggs, I think that’s enough for one day,” he confessed while composing himself from his horrid ordeal; showing his gratitude was an unimaginable desolation of his principles and character and an unwarranted prevalence for Yellowhead, the near-death experience wasn’t particularly nice either. “Just paint that yellow circle around the pothole and we’ll be off, I think, Briggs. There’s a good fellow.”

Herein is where Briggs showed signs of astonishment and confusion. “That’s the thing, Sir,” he announced, “there is no pothole!”

“What are you dribbling about, Briggs?”

“The pothole, all of the potholes, they’ve all disappeared!”

“Don’t be so stu……” Yellowhead looked around him. Scanning the area which once looked like an asteroid impact site. The A342 appeared untainted, completely even, and not a pothole, rut or divot could be seen as far as the horizon. Yellowhead scratched his bald patch, looked to Briggs for his expression, which was the confused jollity of a maniac headless chicken. He mumbled, double-checked the road, double-checked Briggs’ grin, felt faint, and suggested, “well, I guess, erm, I guess our work here is done, erm, Briggs, me lad. Let’s head back to Davizes; I think a pint of best is the order of the day.”

“But, sir, how did……”

“Don’t ask, Briggs.”

“But, sir, the road, it couldn’t……”

“What did I just say Briggs?”

“It couldn’t, like, repair itself, I mea……”

“That’s an order, Briggs.”

 They got to the van, parked just as it was before the incident, but it looked somewhat different. Briggs noted the subtle changes, Yellowhead became outraged by its graphics. He slammed his palm on the side panel. “Briggs?! Why has this van still got our old motto printed on it?”

“You mean the, Where Everybody Matters one?”

Yellowhead quivered, “Don’t! Just don’t even say it! We rid ourselves of that slogan some time ago, and for good reason, Briggs!”

“Because it’s untrue, everybody doesn’t matter, sir?”

“NO! Because, Briggs, because, there’s too many letters, it costs too much to keep adding it the vans,” Yellowhead explained, “and that’s the truth behind that. What really gets my goat up and sends it galloping from its pen, is the stupidity of you to book out an old vehicle with the incorrect graphics, Briggs; these should’ve been put out of service years ago.”

Briggs stood motionless, his face one of ghostly expression. “Sir, I didn’t, there’s the thing, it’s out there….”

“Didn’t what, Briggs?” Yellowhead questioned, “think? You didn’t, Briggs, you didn’t think at all!”

“No, sir, I didn’t take out an old van with the old slogan printed on it. It wasn’t like that when I took it out. In fact, it’s not an old van at all, but a new one. Look, it’s electric-powered!”

“Ye gods!” cried Yellowhead, “a monstrosity! What low-level leftie scum replaced our vehicle with this, this environmentally-friendly milk float!”

Briggs pointed out the horizon. “It’s, erm, not just that, Sir, look!”

Yellowhead followed the angle of his pointing, to note across the land was situated tens of wind turbines, their propellers turning by the gentle breeze. “No!” he screeched, “get Christina Brownie on the phone, development project department, I want names, I want dates; who gave permission to wreak havoc on our beautiful landscape with these, these conservational eyesores?!”    

“Sir,” Briggs hesitated, but it was the only explanation he could fathom. “I think we were out, you know, drowned in that pothole for longer than we think we were.”

As Yellowhead wore an expression of total disbelief and confusion, a horse pulling a gypsy caravan passed by. A gaunt dreadlocked Caucasian youth with full beard and Romany attire called out, “hi there, y’ need any help?”

Yellowhead looked up at him with distaste, “not from you, beatnik heathen! Solstice is not for another two months; get your hippy bandwagon out of our county, or I will be forced to have you removed by force, by our constabulary! For the love of Priti Patel, I thought you lot had been deported to the inferno of abyss you came from?!”

The hipster shrugged as the caravan passed by, “suit yourself!”

Yellowhead confessed to Briggs that he didn’t feel well. “I fear I’m going to puke, if I don’t pass out, Briggs. This overload of leftie growths is like a wart on the backside of Satan, and they’re making me nauseated.”

“Maybe we should get in the van,” Briggs suggested, “and make our way to town. I think you need to see a doctor.”

“I am not getting in that van! Not without petrol in it!” Yellowhead least tested the water, by peering in through the window, and outraged, “reformist bastards have replaced my Bollinger for soya milkshakes!”

As a succession of eco-friendly traffic, hippy buses and horse drawn gypsy caravans gently passed them by, Briggs supposed, “maybe it’s always been this way, and we’ve been so wrapped up in our conservative ideology to notice!”

“What conservative ideology, Briggs, you daft wazzock? It’s just the natural order of things. There’s no obsessive notion to any such right-wing agenda with me,” Yellowhead assured him. “No, I think this is still part of my dream, the nightmarish end section. I favoured the beginning part most, would you care to imbibe on Thatcher’s teat too, Briggs?”

Briggs looked sincerely at Yellowhead. “I think I’ll give that a miss, sir, if it’s all the same to you?”

“As will I to your requisition I board this eco-fiendly passion wagon!” asserted Yellowhead with arms folded.

“Eco-fiendly?” Grant smiled, appealing to his better nature, or searching for it at least. “I see what you did there, clever stuff. You can sing your patriotic hymns all the way to Davizes.”

Yellowhead gulped, held his nose and sat in the passenger seat. “You should note I’m getting in because there is nothing better to get into. Besides, I am reasonable, you may listen to some pop music, if you wish……”

“That is considerate of you….”

“……provided it’s Morrisey or the Who.”

“The Who?” Briggs laughed, observing the small compact disc selection had mysteriously changed to the likes of the Bob Marely, the Clash, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

“Indeed!” Yellowhead announced proudly, “great bunch of Brexiteers. Boris listens to the Who, he was instructed to listen to the Who, even the lefties said he should. I trust I can let you know, Briggs, I was with him and a bunch of others at the Cheltenham Festival, just last year. We sat in his limo, drinking Chateau Le Pin, snorting a nosebag off the tits of some top brass prostitutes and listening to their greatest hits, when we suddenly realised, they meant The World Health Organisation. Oh, how we laughed!”

Briggs sighed, and tried to hold in the notion it was a mistake which caused the spread of Covid19 and the deaths of thousands. Yellowhead was so engaged in his fond memory he had failed to notice the vast changes in Davizes, and how they increased the closer they got to the town centre.

Hordes of youth walked at liberty, grouped they wandered the streets attired in crusty clothing, many with braids or dreadlocks. They were a wider racial demographic then before too, and they mingled with joviality. Houses hung speakers from their windows, and small crowds gathered to dance in the streets below, as DJs spun their tunes. Live acoustic music too was sporadically dispersed along the road, tents hosting wellbeing workshops, Buddhist meditation and Indian head massage. People held up signs for free hugs, others responded. Children ran free without care, playing together and making petty mischief for their own amusement.

By the time they had arrived in the Market Place, gone was the void and the patch of grass. A multitude gathered around a huge stage in the centre, an afro-funk band played lively African rhythms on drums and guitars. Scattered around it were hundreds of stalls, selling a variety of street food and international cuisine, chai, clothes and charity fundraising tents. A comedy marquee sat at one end of the market place, a children’s area at the other, with traditional fairground rides rising behind them both. The whole place lit up with the colours of the rainbow, décor and dress, the smells of food, sweating people, unwashed dogs and cannabis melded and the sounds of joy, laughter and the bass of the music, blended; it resembled a festival. Grant Briggs gulped.

“There was a time, Briggs, when….” Yellowhead continued, then looked up, “what in the good name of Mosely is going on here?!” He stuck his head out of the window. Briggs suggested he didn’t, but it was too late. “What in the name of Thatcher do you think you beatnik scum are doing?! This is not some Glastonbury love-in, this is a level-headed insular Miltshire market town, full of law-abiding conservatives, you have no right to invade it with your hippy bandwagons and freeloading festivities; now go, clear off before I am forced to inform the police. This is against lockdown restrictions, and even if we weren’t protected from a pandemic, I’d still enforce the limitations of showcasing what is clearly a leftie act of terrorism on England’s green and pleasant land!”  

A slender earth mother dressed in a loose Kaftan pointed and giggled, “man, you are like, too funny!” She nudged a fellow next to her. He wore a tie-dye t-shirt, khaki sand shorts and sandals, and was currently engaged in sliding a cold, half-eaten burrito in his wiry beard for safekeeping. “Farquhar, look! There’s some street theatre. A delightful comedian, clearly too old to be from the council is shouting abusive satire and pretending to be all anti-alternative, from a mock council van; it’s hilarious!”       

“I’ll give you too old!” Yellowhead screeched back her.

“Is he for real?” Farquhar gasped, “like hey man, git outta there, there’s no one allowed to be on the county council aged over twenty-seven!”

The earth mother elbowed him in the ribs, “silly man, it’s a joke, Farquhar, you fool!”

The man went for the burrito, “well, it’s not funny.”

Councillor Yellowhead burst from out of the van to parade the area, verbally assaulting everything he saw in such quickfire horror the puss of his global acne turned a fiery red and looked certain to blow at any given moment. Concerned, Briggs followed behind, trying to warn him yet keeping what he considered a safe distance. If the yellowhead was to detonate, Briggs was uncertain of the epicentre of its impact zone.

“These, these, vehicles are parked here illegally!” Yellowhead ranted, while people formed a circle around him, still believing it was a comedy act of street theatre akin to that of Alf Garnett, though they never had heard of that character. “Even if they have paid the fees, which I highly doubt, and can and will be checking, they are not within the white lined parking spaces. And are these street stalls licenced?” He leaned into a noodle bar, the lady at the counter nodded her head to inquire of his order, but he lambasted her, “licenced, are you? Permission to be here?”

Without waiting for an answer, he begun addressing the crowds once more, too many inconsistences and misconducts were happening at once for him to focus on a particular one. The earth mother and associate known as Farquhar sauntered behind them, still debating if this was a comedy routine or not. “You are all here illegally!” Yellowhead continued, “Miltshire Council has given no permission for any kind of, of, whatever this is, a hippy love-freak-out festival, you should stay in your homes, watch Netflix!”

“Hey buddy!” someone called from the crowd, suspicious this was no act, “this isn’t a festival, this is just an average weekend in Davizes!”

Yellowhead spat his words as his face reddened, “it is a Thursday!”

“Ain’t no one work Fridays, man, not for centuries!” laughed another, imagining the absurdity.

“You should come here when we do have our monthly market place festivals!” another giggled.

“The guy is a sham!” the calls came quick and fast;

“I think he’s funny!”

 “Do the one about the pandemic again; like, too funny man!”

Yellowhead’s yellowhead was spinning. “the Covid19 pandemic is not a subject for comedy! I am not a comedian, it is very real, and you are contributing to the spread of the virus!”

“Ha-ha!” the crowds laughed, “the virus was obliterated a year ago, government closed the country down!”

“I remember,” one said, “how they stopped international airship travel, boats too. I remember how they vaccinated the key workers first, how they only invested in bona-fide companies making protective clothing and how that wonderful app worked so well because they funded the contract to a renowned and established internet organisation! They capped new laws until objections could be heard effectively, ensured immigration was protected, housed the homeless, secured care homes foremost, and yes, it was a hard six months, but with faith in our government and their ability to set a good example by complying to the regulations themselves, we got through it!”

Yellowhead was lost for words, confused in mixed emotion. These people were not the extremist anti-governed anarchists he believed them to be. “Yes,” he stumbled, “I errm, well, I am glad to hear of your love and respect for the government, but still, this illegal gathering is unlicenced and no permission has been granted by the council to allow it to happen! So, I order to cease your festivities, return to your jobs, if you have one, return to the jobcentre if not!”

The crowd laughed once more. “Where is this guy from?” many questioned, or similar responses.

A nearby dreadlocked crusty leaned into Yellowhead, “you need to chill, my friend,” causally he offered Yellowhead a large hand-rolled smoking cigarette. It smelt rather exotic to Briggs, who tried to stop the crusty. Yellowhead took a look at the fellow, aghast.

“Is that what I think it is?! Is, is that a cannabis cigar? Is that Tweed you are smoking?” He did not wait for an answer, but yelped to call it to the attention of a casually dressed passing police officer. “Arrest this man at once, officer!”

The policeman strode towards the commotion. “Hand over that spliff!” he demanded.

 The man handed him the smoking implement. The officer took a puff, “where did you get this from?” The crusty pointed out a small stall, in front of Greggs. “Cheers, I knock off in an hour, might get me some, it’s good shit!”

In absolute revulsion Yellowhead quivered, this was the final straw. Briggs warned the officer and the crusty to step back. The chief councillor looked up at the sign for the Greggs bakery, which now read: Greggs Bakery and Riff Raff Spliff Café.

Now desperate from leftie surplus and in a state of horrified overload, he turned urgently towards Briggs for assistance. “Tell me this is a nightmare, Briggs,” he uttered insanely, “pinch me, punch me, clout my very chops with an iron if you must! Whatever it takes to wake me, I plead, I implore you!”

It was at this injunction he noted his assistant had his mouth sealed tight enough to whiten his lips, his cheeks were bulging, and with an unintended giggle, a puff of smoke exited his lips. “Briggs!” he shouted with all his might, “are you……”

Behind his back, Briggs quickly attempted to pass the joint back to the crusty unnoticed.

“…. Are you?” Yellowhead gasped.

 Briggs turned his head downwards and pointed it away from Yellowhead, to exhale the smoke. It was a pathetic attempt to hide the truth.

“….. Smoking…….”

Briggs looked back at his superior with the fake expression of shame.

“A…A….” Yellowhead enraged, his pimple-head boiled puss at critical mass, “…. A…. A…. A whacky-baccy cigar? For crying out loud to the good god Oswald Mosley, man! Are there no depths of depravity you are willing to descend to? Is there no act of villainy you will refute?!”

With that, those who took cover were shielded as best as they could. Others, unaware of the explosive nature of Yellowhead were covered in yellow pus.  

  

---

Will our hero councillor survive this weird influx of unlicenced carefree festivities? Just what is going on with the usually conservative town of Davizes, and has the whole world gone as mad as Diana Abbot on nitrous oxide, or is just the moonrakers? Find out in our amazingly liable continuing fable, next Sunday morning….

Chapter Two: in which we meet the gunman, and Councillor Yellowhead heads out for the mission.

Thought I’d present a weekly story feature, for Sunday entertainment during lockdown…. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Read the first chapter here, if you missed it, else carry on reading for a recap…..

Recap: meeting our intrepid hero, the firm-but-fair Councillor Yellowhead and his trusty sidekick, Grant Briggs at Miltshire County Hall, the chief councillor expressed he had an important mission, but spent too much time insulting the enlisted men, arguing on his state-of-the-art Nokia with the Chief Crime Commissioner, and generally being an arse, to reveal the nature of the mission. Then, a mysterious lone gunman entered the quarters to fire off a machine gun. That’s about the short of it. Our story continues……. 

---

In the aftermath of machinegun fire, a stony hush filled the quarters, and through the dense smoke, a petite woman appeared. Emotionally frozen, the enlisted men gazed up to her from their hiding places, behind the beds of their dormitory. Councillor Yellowhead pouted in disbelief and turned to his imaginary camera to address it. “Really? Strong female characters now; what depths of depraved political correctness and predictable cliché will this story descend to? It’s becoming nearly as leftie-snowflake as Star Trek Discovery.”

Lowering her machinegun to her side, the strong female character required for this politically correct story sucked her bottom lip and growled, “where are they?!”

“Where are who, Nora Fayes?” Yellowhead inquired sarcastically.

She stormed up to him, aiming the barrel of the gun at his nose, a tiny amount of yellow puss dribbled out of it. “You know full well who, the seagulls! I saw them coming this way. If I have to go through you to get to them, so be it!”

“This is becoming something of an obsession for you, councillor,” Yellowhead uncompromising expressed, raising his face from his palm. “You did your public survey, you’ve announced your abhorrence for gulls, and still fail to note, despite umpteen amendments to the minutes of numerous meetings, there’s no such thing as seagulls, just gulls. We are inland, councillor, do not let Bythesea Road fool you, it doesn’t mean it’s actually by the sea. We are not harbouring birds of any species, here in the enlisted men’s quarters, much to their reasonable disappointment. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we are very busy. My colleague here, and I are preparing for a mission of high priority!”

Slightly insanely, and continuing to aim her rifle at the chief, she circled him, “you don’t look like RSPB, but you cannot trust anyone.” Nora took Brigg’s collar by the fist and curled him closer to her. As he gawked in shock, she popped a small pill into his mouth and spoke sincerely to Briggs. “They’re everywhere, infiltrating their way into society. Do not trust anyone, especially if they have bird poop on their shoulder. If captured do not repeat what I am telling you, if they interrogate you, bite down on this pill, it’s cyanide!”

“Erm,” responded Briggs, “thanks, I think.”

“Pay her no attention, Briggs,” Yellowhead ordered, “she’s cuckoo.”

“Where?!” demanded Nora, spinning to reface Yellowhead, her gun aimlessly free to wander. “Where’s the cuckoo, if I can’t bag me a seagull, I’ll make do with a cuckoo, I’ll paint the fucker white!”

“You are insane, quite clearly!” suggested Yellowhead.

“You are the one who lives in Cuckoo Close,” she accused the chief, and he couldn’t deny it.

“I happen to like Urchfunk,” he informed her, “a place so posh, even the road signs are thatched!”

“I saved a Miltshire Council owned children’s playpark in the village of Rude, from dangerous dilapidations by convincing the parish council to take it sold as seen, with our blood money,” she reminded him, “whereas Urchfunk gets its own doggie playground ten times the size, and better equipped; where is the justice in that?!”

Yellowhead frowned and took hold of the barrel, pointing it to his temple. “Do it, Nora, and my ghost will see to it that it never gets a slide, and the bouncy chicken replaced. There will be not so much as a tacky noughts and crosses block plaything! Playgrounds have always been, and will continue to be as long as I am in command of Miltshire Council, covered in bird shit. It helps build a child’s immune system. Seagulls are a major contributor to this. Now, should you not reconsider and defer, then you just jolly well open fire!”

Nora trembled in fear, weighing her options as the barrel wobbled under her anxiety. The tension was at its apex, Yellowhead encouraged her. “Go on then, Fayes, pull that trigger, finish me for good; you know you want to!”

She thought again, of the paperwork involved, and lowered the gun. Yellowhead snatched it off her. “Ha! Strong female character indeed,” he bellowed with laughter, slapping her behind. “Now jog along, and don’t worry your pretty little face about the gulls. There must be something that needs a good scrub around here, or you could join Hannah Curthbart, she’s finally turned up for work and is doing the dishes in the kitchen.”

She scurried off, as Yellowhead threw the gun on Grant’s cot. “Take this with us, Briggs, it may come in handy when dealing with leftie terrorists subverted into the general public.”

“That was well handled, sir,” Briggs thought it proper to say, despite not believing it himself. If he wasn’t so profuse forming his own opinions, he would be ideal for total conservative emersion, his lie proved this. 

“Thank you,” Yellowhead replied, grasping him on the shoulder in a friendly manner, “I’m warming to you, Briggs, I must say. To think we’ll be out there, in the field together, fighting the good fight.” As he said this, he begun to take off his uniform. “We leave no man behind, Briggs, no retreat, no surrender. We will fight aside each other, eat from the same can, sleep cold nights on the same makeshift beds.”

Briggs considered biting on the cyanide.

“I think you’ll find, Briggs,” Yellowhead continued whilst changing, “when I’m out in the field and the assignment is complete, I tend to let my hair down a bit, you know. We may just get along yet.”

Briggs sighed, “I’m sorry sir, I find that very hard to… oh, you’re wearing hot pants?”

Yellowhead stood proudly displaying a tiny bump in his snug florescent-coloured short shorts, barely visible at all under the folds of dense tummy bulge. “We have to blend in with the natives,” he publicised. “What do you think, Briggs, no flattery cos I’m the boss, I don’t tolerate brown-tonguing, give me your honest opinion; Dwayne Johnson, yes?”

“More Boris Johnson,” Briggs heaved.

“So critical of fashion,” came the retort, though Yellowhead took it as a compliment.

“It’s just, well, there’s a tad too much flesh on show, sir,” Grant appraised, “this is rural Miltshire, not California. Maybe try a flat cap, green wellies and a Barbour jacket, I mean, if you wish to blend in.”

With that Yellowhead grunted in agreement and instructed Briggs to get the cones and paint. In no time at all he paced the pavement of county hall’s carpark, eyeing a van. Briggs arrived shortly after, laden with cones, spray-paint cans and followed by an irate Nora Fayes. “Gimmie back my gun!” she demanded, “there be seagulls out here, I’m coming with you!”

“You most certainly are not!” commanded Yellowhead. “Load the van, Briggs.”

He clambered into the passenger seat and readjusted his aging posturer, “run along, Fayes, polish the cupboards or whatever it is you women do around here.”

Briggs got into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Where are we going to?”

“I don’t wish to shock you Briggs, but we’re heading towards Davizes!”

“This gets worse,” Briggs noted, as he pulled out of the carpark. Salivating, Nora leap onto the bonnet, screaming something inaudible about gulls.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t you ever give up?” cried Yellowhead. He mouthed through the windscreen, “we are not hunting gulls, now get off of the van, you silly moo!”

The town centre was void of life, hardly anyone wandered the streets. Not that Briggs could see much, moving his head up and down as Nora bounced around the bonnet, clutching onto the windscreen wipers for dear life. “Drop her off at the shops!” ordered the chief, pointing to a Matalan superstore. Briggs swerved and Nora flew off the bonnet at great speed.

Yellowhead checked the back wheel by thrusting his head outside of the window. Given he felt no bump, he was distraught. “Reading between the lines is a councillor’s number one crucial skill, Briggs. You failed to run her over and finish her off, potentially leaving this story open for a sequel!”

“Really?” Briggs answered, “that’s a bit much!”

“I beg to differ,” Yellowhead said, as he produced a chart from his briefcase. “You get twenty points for a councillor with a tendency to get things done effectively, despite being a Tory. See here, the tally. Fifty points for an immigrant, same for a darkie or a crusty, seventy-five for a single mother with child.”

“Who are you, Frankenstein from Death Race 2000 now?” Briggs inquired, “that’s sick! No wonder you don’t want the pavements widened!”

“Not at all, Briggs, as I told the Gazelle and Herod, I like living in country roads and I like living in country villages with little lanes. I’ve got no pavements at all where I live whatsoever, that’s the way I like it.”

“So you can mow down dissidents?”

“It was just a joke, Briggs,” Yellowhead irritably explained, “you do realise it was just a joke? Upholding tradition is why we don’t need silly pavements things, and anyway, we don’t have single mothers, immigrants or wogs in Urchfunk. You see what I mean, Briggs, about me letting my hair down when out in the field? Laughing and joking is what I’m all about.”

A cold silence followed, until Briggs broke it in his best sarcastic tone. “You could get booked for the Brexit Festival with a comedy routine like that, sir. God knows, they need some acts besides Morrisey.”  

Avoiding suspected sardonic overtones, Yellowhead slipped a compact disc into the radio, “ah, you like music?”

Briggs sighed, expecting the worst. Yellowhead begun to sing, encouraging Briggs to do likewise. “And did those feet in ancient time,” he bellowed out of time and tune, at the top of his voice. “Walk upon England’s mountains green!”

“Could I ask what the nature of our,” Briggs swallowed, “mission, erm, is, sir?”

“Not now,” Yellowhead replied, plucking his Adam’s apple, “and was the holy Lamb of God, On England’s pleasant pastures seen! And did the Countenance Divine, shine forth upon our clouded hills?!”

“Please, sir?” Briggs wasn’t too proud to beg. Not understanding why anyone would want to build Jerusalem here, anyway, but mostly because he wanted Yellowhead to stop the hymn, more desperately than anything he had ever wanted before.

It was at the point of “bring me my chariot of fire!” when the front tyre bounced up and took the van slightly off-guard, the back wheel then struck the same obstruction. “What in the good name of Nigel Farage was that, Briggs?!” Yellowhead exclaimed.

“Just a pothole,” Briggs observed.

“I’ve never experienced one quite that badly,” Yellowhead followed.

“In fairness, you probably wouldn’t have,” Briggs offered, “in your Land Rover Discovery, sir.”

“Not even in the Porsche Cayenne,” Yellowhead added. “Little wonder why there’s a tendency for the chavs to complain. I mean, I can’t understand why they’d not just get themselves a Porsche Cayenne like me, but ours is not to reason why, Briggs. Is this Davizes? We should stop, get some light refreshments.”

“Quite sir,” the sarcasm doubling with every reply Grant made, “makes one wonder. But I’m fine sir, I don’t need a drink.”

“Nonsense, on the drinks! Good on the notion!” Yellowhead nodded, “I’m glad we agree on that much, young Briggs. You see, you asked as to the nature of the mission, and quite accidently, but also literally, you fell right into it! As you know, Briggs, the procedure when a member,” he huffed in anger at the thought of having to say the word, “of the public complains about a pothole, is to file it until such a time we receive over a hundred or so similar complaints regarding the same pothole. A report can then be drawn out and raised at the next monthly meeting. If all councillors agree the matter should be addressed a report will be extracted from the minutes and filed. Once the file reaches over a hundred or so reports the issue can be raised once more at the monthly meeting. If all councillors agree the matter of the matters of files should be addressed, then a vote is taken. If the vote is successful, a councillor is drawn out of the hat to file a report and raise the issue that the Highways Agency need to be contacted, at the next monthly meeting. If all councillors agree the matter of matters should be addressed, and the Highways Agency need to be contacted, a report will be extracted from the minutes and Highways Agency will be contacted. After the supplement report to the Highways Agency is complete, it will be raised at the next monthly meeting that the supplement report to the Highways Agency is complete, and they will file a report to send a worker to the pothole, in a van, and he will assess the significance of the pothole and carry out a risk assessment. That assessment will be sent back to the council to be assessed, and should the funds become available, it will be raised at the next monthly meeting, and voted on. If the vote is successful, and all councillors agree the matter of matters should be addressed, and the Highways Agency has been contacted satisfactorily, then they will file a report back to the Highway Agency, who will send another worker out in a van to spray-paint a yellow circle around the pothole, or if it’s significantly deep, he will pop a traffic cone in it. Now, the confusion comes when all councillors have agreed, but the file…….”

“Sir!” Briggs protested, “I’ve, erm, changed my mind, I would like a drink after all.”

---

Will our intrepid heroes ever reach Davizes, without boring themselves into an early grave, reciting council procedures? Will Councillor Nora Fayes ever get to kill a seagull in cold blood again? And why the hell can’t a pavement be widened for safety purposes because it doesn’t fit in with the traditional looking village roadside, but a Hermes driver can dump his van in the middle of the green? Will we find out next week in: The Adventures of Councillor Yellowhead: The Case of the Pam-Dimensional Pothole!    

Thought I’d present a weekly story feature, for Sunday entertainment during lockdown…. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Chapter One; in which we meet our intrepid hero and his trusty sidekick Briggs in the enlisted men’s quarters at Miltshire County Hall.

The wooden door splintered off its hinges and the clammer reverberated through the galleries of County Hall on Bythesea Road. Which, incidentally isn’t actually by the sea at all, given Miltshire is landlocked.

It was however, of slight relevance to this tale, that during the week-long monsoon season Englishmen refer to as “spring,” the county’s low marshland looked akin to a coastal resort at high tide. It is also of average importance to note, the setting for this story begins at the headquarters of a county council duly responsible for over-filling the obligation to build umpteen affordable housing estates, but tends to build them on said floodplains. Why is only a matter for their attention, and to fathom reason, is merely speculation, but the general ethos portrayed in this wholly fictional fable by aforementioned councillors might provide a clue…. I said might.

“Stand by your beds, you yellow-bellied imbeciles!” roared the broad-breasted fellow, the volume of which twitching his full moustache. He paraded the surprised junior councillors as they hurried to attention, each at the foot of their cots, and he allowed what remained of the door to collapse onto the deck.

With sharp efficiency he snapped his pace stick under his left arm, flush with the limb, and paced ardently through the aisle. He abruptly extended it to prod the nearest enlisted man to him, in the belly. It wobbled, but only slightly.

“And, why is your vest not tucked into your briefs, you scruffy oaf?!”

“Sorry, sir,” the youngster stumbled on his words, at least he was young compared to Yellowhead, at about forty-three.

“Do I have a name, cadet?” Yellowhead bellowed.

“Yes sir!”

“Would you care to address me with it, or do I have to insert this brass baton into the anal region of your brain? It’s not a task I take lightly, but feel it’s critical to add to this week’s agenda.”

“No, thank you, Councillor Yellowbeard, sir!”

Chief Councillor Yellowhead projected his face so close to the enlisted man’s, he could feel the whiskers of his moustache niggling his cheek. Yellowhead snarled at the boy. “Then, pray tell me,” he whispered, “why is your vest not tucked into your briefs, as is the compulsory unform requirement for all junior councillors?”

“I, erm, just woke, sir…” he fumbled the words.

“Woke? Woke, young man?” Yellowhead questioned, “are you woke, cadet?”

“Am I, sorry, what?” the cadet muttered in confusion.

“Woke,” Yellowhead repeated, “I know you know I know what it means in your youthful street slang, cadet, do not play the innocent with me! You mean to suggest you’re a leftie extremist, Corbyn’s vest-licking snowflake dissent and unpatriotic partisan, don’t you?!”

“Oh, right; no sir, just that I literally just woke up.”

Yellowhead scanned his expression with his beady eyes, in an attempt to detect any signals of traitorship. But all he perceived was an indoctrinated devotion to the cause, equal to those icons he admired the most, Churchill, Thatcher and the contemporary Boris Johnson. Aching to note a sign of reformist tenet, so he could take his stress out on the individual, he sighed, and turned on his foot. “Good, cadet; you know the penalty for treason.” Unsaid, the punishment was suspected by the enlisted men to be to kiss the aging backside of Theresa May, right in the crack. The cadet shuddered at the thought, a true test to his dedication, should it not prove to be hearsay.

Meanwhile Councillor Yellowhead marched on down the aisle, scorning each man standing to attention by their cots. His Nokia 3310 rang and the councillor fumbled his pocket to locate it.  He frowned and answered, “Yes, what now, MacFurryson, I’m really rather busy?!”

Some inaudible but apparently irate chatter flowed out of the phone’s speaker; Yellowhead listened and responded, “….and what, you want another medal, police crime commissioner? May I just enquire what your men were doing at Swan Meadow in order to cap……”

Yellowhead hesitated, and huffed his anger. Steam from his ears reduced the redness surrounding his pus-face. “Look, Fungus, or whatever your name is, I expressly told you to order your men to guard the King Alfred statue in Poosea, and now you tell me they’re gallivanting the council estates, arresting a known rapist? What if Black, or even Nordic Lives Matter scum try to tear the statue down? Is the 878AD Battle of Edlington, and Alfred the Great’s honour sacred no more; would you not care one iota if EU militia invaded, bringing their croissants, French onion soup and filth like that? Fungus? Huh?”

The line fell silent.

“Yes,” Yellowhead huffed, “I thought as much. Now, quit conforming to woke-obsessed leftie philanthropists; historically sexual attacks have always occurred, yes, they’re sad, but unfortunately the problem will never go away, whereas if we lose the statues our pride in England is lost, FOREVER!” The chief councillor let out a heavy sigh and addressed his phone once again, “we’ve had several meetings about this, MacFurryson, where you confirmed your allegiance to conservatism, now let’s hear some it coming through, okay?!”

Whimpering could be heard from the phone’s speaker.

Out of character, Yellowhead was sympathetic. “I’m on your side,” he snivelled, “honestly, Fungas, except when you allowed silliness, like adding rainbow colours to the Miltshire police Facebook page logo. Look, you’ve only got till May and you can retire; remember the condo we promised, eh, remember the conservatory, the chocolate-box cottage? Well, then, listen, there, there; I’ve got to dash old friend, talk soon.” With that the chief councillor threw the phone into his pocket.

“I need someone I can trust,” he asserted his dominance over the enlisted men, “for an imperative mission behind enemy lines.”

The men gasped in horror. “You mean,” one dared to utter, “outside? Out there?”

“Yes, cadet!” the chief councillor snarled, snapping his head around to see who muttered. His head was, as his name suggested, one giant, pus-filled zit, ready to detonate if just one of these imbecilic straight-out-of college plebes squeezed his patience too far. “I’m fully aware due to the pandemic you have not been allowed out since last year, but I’m old enough to have been vaccinated, twice, so it matters not that you will accompany me on this mission, you have to come to terms with your expendability. Outside contractors are clenching the budget, and complaints have been raised by,” Yellowhead shuddered with mere mention of them, “by, by the general public.”

He turned to face a randomly selected skinny fellow and launched his baton outwards towards him, “You!”

“Me?”

“Yes, you boy! State your name and rank!”

“Briggs, sir, Grant; trainee liaison officer!”

“Liaison eh? Perfect, you will be adequate. Report to supplies immediately, request some traffic cones and yellow spray paint,” Yellowhead announced, “and call your wife, tell her you may not be home until after teatime, if at all!” He then turned and pouted at an imaginary camera, “there’s a savage world out there, wrought with danger and perilous unknown, erm, things, and we have to face it with a sense of hope once more……”

“Really?” mumbled Briggs in jest.

“…. Think Calne,” Yellowhead acutely juddered, “but worse….”

For the first time, mild-mannered Briggs was afraid.

“You should be grateful, Briggs, you’ve been selected to brave the fresh Miltshire air, if this bunker had windows, you’d note it is spring. But you should also note, it will test every section of your training here at Bythesea Road.”

“One question, sir,” Briggs inquired, “if I may?”

“If you must, cadet,” annoying muttered Yellowhead.

“Why do they call it Bythesea Road, then, sir, when, you know….?”

“Did training meetings not cover this?” Yellowhead tousled, “perhaps it’s top secret, but seeing as you’re coming on this mission, there’s some details you need to know…” He leaned in close to Briggs, his foul breath whisked up Brigg’s nostrils, and Briggs winced. Ensuring no other enlisted man could hear, Yellowhead whispered, “all part of an experiment, to see if the, the damn public of Miltshire are intelligent enough to detect our lies. Create a bleeding obvious one, see if they notice Trow Vegas is landlocked and the road cannot possibly be by the sea at all, and if not, which I’m pleased to inform you was hugely efficacious, it gives us license to propagate and spread as much bullshit and fabrications as we see fit; we can fib till our hearts content, they buy it every time.”

“Genius!” Briggs sparked.

“Precisely,” Yellowhead grimaced for the first time, the closest he came to smiling. “This is why we flush out any leftie terrorists infiltrating our council, their schmaltz compassion and nauseating morality is treacherous, they’ll whine-hole health and safety regulations like biblical passages. Be warned, Briggs, insiders lurk in these corridors, tell no one of your mission, fetch the cones and spray paint, take out anyone who might be wearing a charity shop brown suit, and return with your life; clear?”

“Crystal, Sir!” replied Briggs, but as he started on his journey, the sound of machine-gun fire reverberated around the quarters. In a murky haze few of the enlisted men noted the scant figure standing heroically in the doorway, clasping a smoking machine gun, dropping a cigar end to the floor, and extinguishing it with a hefty boot. Most of the men hit the deck, else cowered behind their cots, but all of them quivered in fear, as Councillor Yellowhead turned to face the mysterious intruder.

Who is the mysterious gunman? Will Yellowhead and Briggs escape with their lives, if not for the reason stated, why the hell is it really called Bythesea Road, when it’s about as far away from the sea as possible? All might yet be revealed next week, in The Adventures of Councillor Yellowhead……

Read Chapter 2, here.