The Sprouts of Wrath

1

The dawn choristers completed their rowdy ovation to the new day as the Brentford Mercury’s driver tossed his first Friday bundle in the general direction of a cornershop doorstep. On high Olympus, the Fates, nodding in agreement across their breakfast ambrosia, declared the day officially begun.

Norman hoisted the bundle of weekly locals on to the worm-eaten countertop, where it struck with an appropriately dull thud and raised a glorious cloud of dust. The shopkeeper sighed with pleasure. Since the departure of his wife with a former editor of the borough’s organ he had allowed the business to run magnificently to seed. His dust was the envy of every married man in the neighbourhood and Norman, revelling in each new pleasure afforded to him by his unexpected return to bachelorhood, was living, as he considered it, “life to the full”. Upstairs last week’s underpants lorded it upon the bedside rug; today’s sartorial excesses stretched to a pair of odd and undarned socks and the garish Hawaiian shirt his wife had particularly hated. Norman had also recently cultivated a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop whiskers which he considered to be rather dashing.

“It’s not a bad old life if you don’t weaken,” he constantly informed his customers, adding guardedly that this was of course dependent upon not letting the bastards (whoever they were) grind you down.

Whistling tunelessly, between teeth of his own design and construction, Norman slid the blade of his reproduction Sword of Boda paperknife through the twine bindings and spread away the pink covering to expose the FRONT PAGE NEWS. There was always more than the merest hint of ceremony about this weekly routine. Something vaguely akin to the mystical, although performed subconsciously and without the solemnity generally accorded to ritual. But such was often the way of it in Brentford. Certain customs appeared to have acquired almost magical significance. Professor Slocombe’s dawn perambulation of the borough boundaries, for example, or Neville the part-time barman’s daily check of the Swan’s beer engines. Such things were part of the Vital stuff of Brentford and a contributing factor towards the town’s separateness from its neighbours. Brentford lacked the cosmopolitanism of Hounslow, the upward mobility of Ealing, the young professionalism of Chiswick and the aloof urbanity of Kew. It should not be surprising therefore to note that the initials of these surrounding territories spell out the word HECK, the nineteenth-century euphemism for hell.

Norman flung the length of knotted twine into an overflowing rubbish box beneath the counter, leant upon the threadbare elbows of his ragged shopcoat and took stock of the week’s doings. The headline was not slow to engage his attention: INVISIBLE MYSTIC IN CHURCH HALL RUMPUS ran the generously inked banner headline filling a third of the front page. “Guru Vanishes With The Takings As Fists Fly!”

Norman chuckled to himself as he read the account of how local warlock and self-styled miracle worker Hugo Rune, having failed to make good his promise to dematerialize before a capacity crowd, had performed an entirely different variety of vanishing act when the dissatisfied punters turned ugly and demanded the return of their money. Fearing possible damage to the Jacobean timbers of the newly restored church hall, Father Moity had telephoned for the police. During the ensuing punch-up there had been twelve arrests and the local constabulary were currently seeking the whereabouts of the perfect master.

Norman shook his head and turned the page.

BIRMINGHAM’S OLYMPIC HOPES GO UP IN SMOKE: “Stadium Fire Ends Brum’s Olympic Dreams”. Of course Norman had heard all this on the wireless set. The grim catalogue of mismanagement, bungling, inefficiency and chaos had been daily news for months. As David Coleman had said, “The final kiss goodbye has long been on the cards.”

“Shame,” said Norman to no-one but himself, “I thought I’d have a crack at the javelin.”

On a lower portion of the same page was an item that any other editor might well have considered to be front-page news: GOLD BULLION ROBBERY: “Thieves Net Largest Ever Haul In Crime Of The Century”. Norman whistled once more through his home-made railings as he read the figure. Even allowing for the exaggeration of the Mercury’s cub reporter, Scoop Molloy, there seemed little doubt that this was, as the Sweeney’s now legendary “Guv” would have put it, “One big blag, George.”

Exactly how the robbery had been carried out was still something of a mystery and Norman marvelled at the ingenuity of the light-fingered gentry who had slipped unseen through the high security cordon to abscond with the many tons of golden booty. Norman counted up the rows of noughts and tried to reconcile them into hundreds, thousands and millions. It didn’t bear thinking about.

A quick flip through the remaining pages disclosed pretty much what he had come to expect. The same tired old stuff, although strangely comforting in its tired old sameness. Local fêtes and flowershows. A listing of next week’s car boot sales. (Norman never ceased to be amazed by the public’s apparent craving for car boots.) A three-page tide table. Next week’s demonstration of the art of Levitation called off due to unforeseen circumstances. The council still flogging off portions of wasteland in a vain attempt to make the books balance. Old Sandell, the Mercury’s oracle, predicting scandal for the house of Windsor and a one-eyed Puerto Rican to win the Derby. The same old, tired old stuff.

Shaking his head once more — just for the hell of it — Norman dug a biro from his top pocket and began to number up the papers.

“An invisible guru, a gold bullion robbery and aloha to the Brum Olympics,” muttered Norman. “Worth a bit of chit-chat in the Swan come lunchtime, but hardly likely to change the face of civilization hereabouts.”

In the light of future events, however, Norman might have done well in discarding this particular remark in favour of something completely different … possibly one of the less cheerful doom prophecies from the Book of Revelation, or a simple “The end is drawing nigh”.

But precognition had never been one of Norman’s stronger points. For indeed had he possessed this rare gift to even the slightest degree, he would not now have been unnecessarily numbering up papers which he would shortly be delivering himself. For upon this particular morning, as on several past, Zorro the paperboy had chosen to remain in his cosy bed rather than face the rigours of bag, bike and bull terrier.

Thus it was that with a Beefheartian air upon his lips and the dust settling thickly upon his “mutton-chops”, Norman continued with his task, blissfully unaware that he had just glimpsed the beginning of the end. Or if not that, then something that looked very much like it.