John John and Calita made their way towards Taggy’s rock, pushing through the crowd, to the strip of more empty ground that was closest to him. As they got near to people they all started moving away cos the smell from that wheelbarrow was really fuckin terrible. About 1.30 John John unpeeled the sacks from the barrow and started to take stuff off it. There were murmurs from the crowd. Calita sat perched on the rock next to Taggy and a couple of chronic pill-heads, making small talk.

What the fuck’s he doin now asked Taggy.

I dunno, some daft plan said Calita.

Give us a blow job said Taggy.

Give yerself one, said Calita, and laughed out loud when Taggy strained against the chains what were holding him down, his mouth making the desperate shape of an ‘O’ .

*

John John pushed the wheelbarrow round the dead trodden grass, stopping it on occasion to scatter stuff out of his barrow. By the time he had finished the whole rock was surrounded by a wreckage of bad stinking novelties; jelly cocks leaking fluids, chattering teeth spewing offal, fake fruits and false tits all pumped up with beer dregs and effluents, all items soaked and stuffed with the foul mixer of badness from the pub. The crowd backed off to a safe distance.

When the eagles arrived both the ‘moon’ and satellites was low in the sky. They came diving down twds Taggy but soon saw all that glow in the dark crap scattered all around him. They dived right on the skeletons, and on the snatching hands, the talking wounds and all the rest of it, clawing madly at all of it, pecking and devouring.

Taggy cunt believe his luck. The dumb birds ate all the plastic shit and were soon drooping around, falling and tumbling in some horrible dance of near death, hopping, wretching, lying down and stumbling.

When it looked like the birds wer really like dazed and confused John John set about them using a tennis racket for a bludgeon. It was a right laugh to see him mashing and smashing and whacking the great birds with blood and ‘lovely feathers’ © going everywhere until they were all pounded into the ground, never mind that they were a protected species, and a great sullen cheer went up from the crowd.

*

John John was hoisted on the shoulders of many of the great lads of that area – Pointy and Kev Filty and Dobbo and Two Eyes were all part of it – and he was carried around the neighbourhood in a triumphal procession, little kids scampering round and beating a march rhythm on impromptu drums made of dustbins and hub caps.

It was a night to remember. There were fireworks. Romances started. Romances ended. A bloke got killed. A baby got born in that skip at the side of Texas Homebase.

And as the crowd moved off in search of new excitements, cheering and singing, Taggy somehow got left alone.

*