Well, that was as may be, but I didn’t particularly want a word with them.

On the last occasion I’d encountered men with baseball bats and ill intent, I’d only just escaped with my kneecaps intact, and that time I’d had a ready-made club in the form of a myoelectric false hand on my left arm to help. Now I’d swapped that for a soft and flabby transplant, which would be about as much use in a fight as a feather duster.

Hadn’t they heard of the Sid Halley reputation that beating him up wouldn’t stop him? Perhaps they had but, nevertheless, they were determined to prove it wrong. Maybe with good reason. It was a long while now since anyone had tried it, and my aging body was screaming to my brain to just turn and run.

I looked around for some support, but the car park was deserted. The early departures had already left and those remaining were all watching the last race. Even Fred the gateman had long gone. I was on my own.

One of the men swung his baseball bat and smashed the driver’s door window of my Discovery into thousands of little pieces.

Damn them. I instantly became very angry. Hitting me was one thing, but damaging my car was quite another.

Instead of doing the sensible thing of turning and running, I advanced on the two men.

‘What the hell do you want?’ I shouted at them.

Just for a second they seemed somewhat taken aback by my aggression, glancing at each other through the eyeholes of their balaclavas. Sadly, their composure returned pretty quickly and they moved apart to be on either side of me.

‘What do you want?’ I shouted again.

‘We have a message for you,’ said the one on my left.

‘Who from?’

‘Never you mind,’ the man replied.

‘So what is this message?’

I feared the message was going to be purely physical rather than verbal, but I was wrong.

‘Piss off back south and don’t come back,’ said the man. ‘Or else.’

I turned slightly towards him while keeping the other one in my peripheral vision. ‘Or else what?’ I demanded belligerently.

‘Or else you might get hurt.’

‘I’m not frightened of you,’ I said calmly, although I was. ‘And you can tell Anton Valance to stuff his message up his arse. Do you hear?’

Not much of their faces were visible through the eye and mouth holes of their balaclavas, but it was enough for me to know that they were not fazed one jot by my use of the Valance name. They knew exactly who he was, and that he was the one who had sent the message.

Both men raised their baseball bats and advanced menacingly, and I wondered if turning and running might have been the better option after all.