'Grub, man, look.'

Sitting on the floor, just inside the rear door, was a can of Coke and two Snickers bars.

'Wan o' thae guys must have stashed them so his mates couldnae cadge any off him/ Murph observed, with the expert eye of one versed in the protocols of playground confectionery preservation. At school, you only had to produce a bar of chocolate for half a dozen cadgers to instantly appear, pestering you for a bit as though they'd just parachuted in from Ethiopia. They'd follow you around if you walked away, like a procession of Hare Krishnas, chanting their mantra: 'Gaunny gie's a bit, eh gaunny? Just wan bit, come on, eh, gaunny? Don't be a Jew, man, gie's a bit, eh, gaunny?' If you wanted peace to eat your snack, you had to learn to do it in secret, and you had to make sure no-one knew you were 'carrying'.

'Finders keepers/ Murph said, heading for the stash.

Lexy's instinct was to warn him off, but he kept his 242.

mouth shut on the tripartite grounds that a) The bloke was bound to blame his mates; b) Wee Murph wouldn't listen anyway; and c) he was starving. They scoffed the lot and drank the ginger between them in a matter of seconds, which was just as well because someone came out of the house just as they were finishing.

They stuffed the can and the wrappers in between two of the crates and scrambled back under the blankets. It struck Lexy yet again that this was an utterly pish hiding place - definitely no use at a competitive level - but the crucial factor was that (so far) nobody knew they were there to be found. Unfortunately, there was no 'in den one- two-three' either, and saying you 'had your keys up' was not a known defence against firearms.

Wee Murph was right, though. Since then it hadn't just felt like hours, it was hours. There were people nearby constantly after that; not inside the truck so much, but walking around outside, coming in and out of the building, discussing, arguing or simply hanging about. Waiting.

Every so often there was a long enough lull for them to feel sufficiently confident to whisper, but they didn't dare come out, and nor was there any reason to yet. They were safe where they were for the time being, though they had to hope that the folk in the house didn't run short of blankets when it came time to kip down. For now, the only enemy that did know they were there was the ginger pressing ever harder on their bladders.

'I cannae haud on much longer, man/ Murph pleaded. They were both sure someone was outside, having heard a voice talking on a mobile.

It had been agreed that darkness would provide their chance. They would wait until it was pitch-black and then head for the trees, as quickly and as quietly as they could.

243.

Unfortunately, it had been a bright, clear evening, with a full moon in the sky, which made the onset of night stomach-burstingly slow. There had been opportunities a little earlier, when it still wasn't dark enough, but now that it was, there seemed to be an almost permanent presence outside the vehicle.

'Can you die of a burst pish-bladder?' Murph asked.

'I dunno.'

'I'll tell you in aboot two minutes.'

'Shoosh.'

They heard footsteps outside the back of the lorry.

'Lydon,' called a voice. 'Green light. Get rolling.'

This was followed by more footsteps, more voices. The ramp was withdrawn and the roller-shutters pulled closed. Minutes later, the engine started again, covering the sounds of two boys urinating copiously and with blessed relief into a crate of nine-millimetre ammunition.

244.FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER FIFTH .

musical differencesRay was looking down on himself in the centre of the room, where he sat restrained and motionless. Thorpe and Boyle were hovering around nearby, circling past every so often to check on him. Instinctively, he reached with his left hand and pressed 'n', the key bound to 'say_team: Help! Frozen nowhere guarded by [RED TEAM] Thorpe and [RED TEAM] Boyle'. In the Freeze Tag mod, you needed a team-mate to stand next to you for three seconds in order to thaw you out - then you could go looking for some payback. Ray heard loud blasts and looked along the corridor, where a blue female figure was strafe-jumping towards him, making Thorpe and Boyle take the pain. Their puny pistols no match for her double shotgun, they both scattered in search of fresh armour and health packs. She stood above Ray, checking all angles for snipers as her proximity initiated the release process, during which they were both at their most vulnerable. He couldn't see her face, only her back. On the keyboard, he hit 'X', bound to his thank-you message, to find out her name. 'Much obliged, [BLUETEAM]?????? m8!' it read.

There followed the familiar, anticipated crash and tinkle of being unfrozen, which was when Ray awoke and instantly sat up. He enjoyed no moment of semiconscious delirium this time, no gradual remembrance of his waking circumstances. The fucking light was still on for a start, so 247.

as soon as he opened his eyes, he could see just how deep in the shit he was still submerged. He looked at his watch. It was after four, meaning he had been out for five hours, more than he usually managed at home these days. It felt like longer; too long, in fact. It felt like he'd slept in and was now running late, with the thing he was late for being the rest of his life.

They'd left him on that chair all day and well into the evening. There'd been no sleep there, no merciful oblivion. Instead it had been like suspended animation, with hours disappearing and individual seconds lasting an unbearable eternity. Every moment was spent wondering what was going to happen next, willing something to happen, something to change, to end this limbo of unknowing; all the while dreading those very same things. He'd tried in vain not to think of Kate and Martin, their names and faces simultaneously giving comfort and torment. He'd wished and he'd fantasised, allowing himself those indulgences as long as he stayed off hope. He wanted to hold them both again. He wanted to escape. He wanted answers. He wanted revenge. He wanted a chaingun, Quad Damage and a shitload of bullets. But he'd probably have settled for dry trousers and a change of underwear.

They had interrogated him, purely an exercise in stomping his psyche, much as the mock execution had been. There certainly didn't appear to be any other purpose to it, as he didn't have anything to tell them and they didn't have much to ask. Ray had posed more questions than they had, though it was a dead heat on who garnered the more information, [RED TEAM] and [BLUETEAM] tied at fuck- all.

After letting him almost literally stew in his own juices for another few hours, they came back, though this time 248.

Boyle was accompanied not by Thorpe, but by the guy who'd driven the people-carrier the previous night. It was hardly a revelation, but at least it narrowed down the theories field, scratching the 'rival factions, caught in crossfire between' subcategory.

They untied him but replaced the hood, then ordered him to stand up, which he did on unsteady legs. His feet and calves had gone numb, and while putting weight on them wasn't actually painful, the sensation was far from pleasant. The thought of what he might be walking towards didn't help.

Ray was led out of the room and along an L-shaped hallway that turned right after about ten or twelve paces. The floor changed from lino or tiles to wooden boards again. The bag was removed, revealing him to be in a large kitchen, with deep twin sinks and a rusted range that was merely a good clean and a paint-job away from being worth a couple of grand. Through the grimy window he could see headlights and hear the noise of the lorry's engine being revved up. This time, though, he wasn't getting a lift.

Boyle opened a door, beyond which was darkness. He flipped a switch on the wall outside and illuminated the bare shelves of an old-fashioned walk-in pantry.

'Your suite awaits, sir.'

Ray tried to think of a witty comeback, but as the only words bubbling near the surface were 'fuck fuck cunt cunt bastard wanker prick arsehole knob-end', he decided to keep them to himself, for now. The other goon shoved him inside, before Boyle closed and locked the door. Ray then heard straining and an ungodly screech of metal as they dragged the range in front of the door, presumably in case Ray knew how to pick locks using wooden skelfs. He slumped down to the ground, a thin sheet of lino covering 249.

the damp-smelling floorboards. High above him, a bare bulb dangled from a grey flex, giving out enough light to induce radiation sickness. He could probably twist it out if he climbed up the empty shelves, but it wasn't like he was planning to kip down for the night.

Not planning to, but his knackered body had other ideas. He remembered sitting with his back to the door, not lying down, so he must have slumped after losing consciousness. His exhaustion existed on so many levels that merely closing his eyes against the intrusive light had been enough: his brain sussed that there was bugger-all reason to be awake at this point and had decided to shut all systems down for a while.

Five hours. Five hours uninterrupted. Even with that pigging light on and the cold damp in his trousers, it had been his best stretch of sleep since Martin came home from the maternity hospital. As a result, he no longer felt so resigned or submissive, and didn't just feel awake: he felt revived, purposeful, dynamic even. Unfortunately, he was feeling all of those things inside a locked cupboard.

He got to his feet and climbed up on the lowest shelf to survey what might be resting on the higher ones. He found dust, wood shavings, a Biro and the statutory empty paint tin. Even the bloke in The A Team would be struggling to fashion an escape plan out of that lot. Ray stepped down, the floorboards wobbling under the renewed weight and his ankle about five degrees from disaster. Probably rotted through, he reckoned, the thought lighting up the only bulb brighter than the bare effort hanging from the ceiling.

He lifted the sheet of lino and rolled it up, placing it on one of the shelves. The boards below were ancient-looking things: warped, loose, soft and decayed. Ray retrieved the paint tin and wedged it open with the Biro, then squeezed 250.

the lid between two of the floorboards and stood on it with his heel. One end popped up without struggle, the bent and rusted nails easily pulling free of the damp joist underneath. The boards either side also came up with negligible resistance, and he placed them on shelves out of the way to let the ample light shine into the resulting hole. There was earth about two feet below, leaving a crawlspace just deep enough to get into. He took off his jacket, placing his wallet and housekeys in his trousers' back pocket, then slithered his way into the gap, hands first.

There were walls at his back and to the left; the kitchen's underside to his right. That was where he wanted to go, but he had to move forward first to get his entire body through the hole, an endeavour not assisted by the support joist that shaved four or five inches off his overhead clearance. He turned his head sideways and edged forward, his hair and left ear burrowing into the dusty earth. There was a smell that reminded him of hoes and old lawnmowers. He could see nothing, his body blocking all the light behind him. His left arm prodded at the darkness ahead, fumbling in the earth to drag himself forward. Somehow, he got both of his feet down through the space and stretched his legs out behind him, digging his toes into the soil. Light was spilling down around him now, enough to make out a wall just a few feet ahead. He used the extra purchase to pull his head back out from under the joist, then began maneuvering sideways in the direction of the kitchen. The overhead clearance grew as the ground began descending ever more sharply, until he was all but sliding down an incline into the dark. He came to a halt against another wall, from where he was able to look up the short slope at the hole he'd made.

He was in the foundations of the house, in a small 251.

chamber enclosed on three sides by walls and on the fourth by the slope. There was enough light to see pipes leading into the kitchen and electrical cables snaking along the subterranean stonework. More importantly, he could also see a square gap in the foundation wall, leading into the next chamber. The gap, just big enough for a man to crawl through, must have been put there to allow plumbers and sparks into where Ray was now - which suggested that the chamber they came from must be accessible from the surface.

Ray crawled into the space, discovering that the slope did not continue on the other side. Instead, the ground fell away completely beneath the gap. He patted the wall below, leaning down as far as his balance allowed, then a little further than his balance allowed. The ground turned out to be only a few inches further down than his reach, but it was a long few inches to fall when you didn't know that. He belly-flopped ungracefully on to the hard stone floor, where he looked up to see salvation in the shape of a cracked, frosted-glass window, through which moonlight was dimly shining. The smell like hoes and old lawn- mowers turned out to be coming from a hoe and an old lawnmower, among several other derelict gardening implements lining the walls of what was unmistakably a cellar.

Ray took a moment to compose himself and shake the dust from his hair, then held his breath as he tried the doorhandle. It opened amid minor squeakage and major exhalation. Utter negligence on the part of the proprietor, who would have no-one to blame but himself if some motivated master-criminal made off with his museum-piece Qualcast.

The door gave on to a short stairwell, leading to the rear 252.

of the house, where weeds and wild grass had smothered the potentially noisy gravel. Ray climbed until his head was at ground level, then flattened himself against the stairs, scanning the area. His car was sitting twenty yards away, to the side of the house. There was a chance the keys would still be in the ignition, it being unlikely his captors were much concerned about passing thieves. The same went for the Rover, for that matter. However, if the keys weren't in the ignition, the sound of the door opening could be enough to drastically cut his head start for having it away on his toes. He could head for the trees silently right then, but in the debit column for that option was the fact that he had no idea where he was, what lay beyond the trees or how long it would be before the goons came to retrieve him from the pantry and discovered he'd gone.

He stayed still a few more moments, listening for any hint of activity. There was nothing to be heard. All through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a gun-toting bampot.

Ray kept tight to the walls as he made his way around the building, picking each step with delicate care to minimise any sound. His own car was nearer, so he approached it first and peered through the window, but the moonlight was insufficient to make out whether there were keys in the ignition. He placed his fingers on the handle and prepared to pull, then decided against it and gently let go. The night was so still and quiet, the sound was bound to carry. If he was going to gamble, better to gamble with the Rover. In fact, it was inarguably the better bet, as it wouldn't need ten minutes of warming up as protection against stalling, neither of which were conducive to a swift getaway.

Ray made his way stealthily to the larger car and pressed 253.

his face to the glass. The Rover was parked at a better angle to catch the moon, but there still wasn't enough light to see much inside, other than a blinking LED on the stereo. Beyond it was a people carrier, like he had seen the previous night, as well as a van and two Mondeos, each hitched to a trailer-mounted speedboat.

Again he placed his fingers on the handle, pulling until he met resistance and gradually applying more pressure. He could feel the mechanism straining nearer and nearer to release, but knew that however gentle that final increment was, what followed would be as percussive as if he'd just given it a good yank. At that moment, he heard a cough and the sound of footsteps inside the house. He immediately flung the door open and dived into the driver's seat, his right hand reaching and finding keys in the ignition.

'Thank fuck.'

The engine leapt instantly to life and he spun off up the track, one hand on the wheel and the other fumbling around for the headlights. In his rearview mirror he could see the front door of the house, out of which two figures emerged, almost tripping over one another in their haste. His right hand found the headlights as he changed up and floored the accelerator, the illumination arriving in time to save him from shooting straight across the approaching T-junction and into the field beyond.

He hit the brakes and turned hard right, skidding and slewing from one side to the other before getting the machine back under control. A few seconds later, he glanced in the rearview again and saw his own black Polo make the same turn, which was when he knew he was clean away. They'd grabbed it first because it was nearest and, unburdened by trailers, theoretically faster than any of the other vehicles parked outside the house. Theoretically.

254.

Ray slid the Rover into fourth and put further effortless distance between the cars, allowing himself a little smile as he felt the powerful acceleration and imagined his pursuers' faces, hobbling along in his Polo. It was the first and only time he was grateful to Div for selling him the useless piece of shit.Everybody knew someone like Div, a kind of loveable mess whom all your instincts warned you not to trust, but still you couldn't help doing so; after which you only had yourself to blame.

Actually, that was selling him short. The words 'Div' and 'shambles' were inextricably synonymous in the minds of anyone who knew him, but the evidence could be contradictory. Here was a guy, for God's sake, who these days ran a successful business undertaking the flawless, meticulous and precise relocation of entire computer networks, and yet any time they organised a LAN party, Div was the one who would turn up with half his system missing and need to borrow bits from everyone else. And while Div always gave the impression of being chaotically unreliable, it was difficult to remember an occasion when he had genuinely let Ray down (pace the Polo, but technically even that had now been redeemed).

In this sense, Div was the polar opposite of Simon, who gave the impression of being incredibly together, clinically organised, and yet let Ray down on more occasions than it was healthy to dwell upon. It had latterly occurred to him that the crucial difference was Div gave a fuck.

There were many ways, in fact, in which Div and Simon were opposites, which probably explained why they didn't get along. The weird thing - no, perhaps the appropriate thing - was that it wasn't an entirely mutual antipathy.

255.

Simon, tending towards the highly strung, reserved a lot more venom for Div than Div, being more laid back than most other human beings could achieve without opiates, could be arsed mustering for Simon. Div was the only person Ray could remember not being angered to the point of destructive rage by something Simon had done, despite being the increasingly frequent target of his antics and abuse. This was because Div was also the only person who absolutely refused to take Simon seriously, and Simon liked to be taken very, very seriously. Obviously, there was some quality vicious-circle action going on there.

Ironically, the one thing they had in common was also the best illustration of what made them so very different. It was, in a word, Queen. Not the parasite, but the rock band: Freddie and Brian, John and Roger, Scaramouche and Beelzebub, thunderbolts and lightning. Queen was Div's religion and Simon's guilty little secret.

When they all shared a flat in third year (the three of them plus Simon's long-suffering mate Ross), music was often less a shared enthusiasm than a battleground. It wasn't simply a matter of debating the comparative merits of each other's tastes and collections; much of what was said about music wasn't about music at all, but a surrogate outlet for the tensions that were natural between four adolescents in such close proximity.

Ray would occasionally (and very, very foolishly) play the white dove and encourage everyone to agree to disagree. After all, they each had their own stereos in their respective rooms, so volume considerations aside, what did it matter what someone else was playing? Well, it sure mattered to Simon. All it took was Div to stick on a Queen album and Simon would be ripping into him for it as soon as he entered the Neutral Zone (aka the kitchen), 256.

demanding to know how he could listen to such garbage and growing all the more frustrated at Div's refusal to offer any explanation beyond that he liked it.

Ray hadn't been very familiar with the Queen oeuvre prior to living with Div, having written them off as the pantomime dames of British rock, listened to on Ford Sierra car stereos by people who bought one album a year, usually at Woolworth's. It wasn't hard to see why they wouldn't be Simon's cup of tea, but a little more tricky to explain the disproportionate ire their music provoked. But that was before Ray had heard the phrase 'Methinks the lady doth protest too much'.

Ray was accompanying Simon on his regular weekend trip to his parents' place in Giffnock to retrieve his laundry. Simon had gone downstairs to get them some coffees and left Ray alone in his old bedroom, where he spotted a pile of records at the bottom of an open wardrobe. Ray crouched down to get a closer look. In the main, the collection comprised valuables and rarities Ray had heard Simon boast about. There were picture discs, coloured vinyl twelve-inch singles, bootlegs, limited-edition gatefold sleeve covers: treasures Simon had tapes of at the flat, but understandably didn't want any harm coming to the originals. Underneath that lot, however, were twelve Queen albums, stacked chronologically from Queen to The Works. The guy even had Hot Space, and had evidently forgiven them for it, given the subsequent purchase of its successor.

The picture was clear. Barring the existence of a sibling he inexplicably failed to mention, Simon had been heavily into Freddie and the boys from an early age; Ray was guessing around Bo-Rhap, 75-76, with the earlier material explored retrospectively. Some time after 1984, however, coinciding with his mid-to-late teens, there had been a 257.

Stalinesque purge, possibly the same month as he bought his first Bauhaus twelve-inch or maybe his first can of hairspray. It was one thing to grow out of a band, but this was like the revisionism that followed a military coup. Messrs Mercury, May, Deacon and Taylor had been airbrushed out of all photographs and their works hidden away in a vault.

At least this finally explained Simon's advocacy of grandiose stagecraft, which had always sat incongruously with his, ahem, official record collection. He detested the minimalism not just of bands he hated, such as The Smiths, but even of those he liked, such as the Mary Chain. He couldn't take all that standing-in-one-place stuff, looking bored and indifferent, and as for the twenty-minute set, don't go there, man. Ray now understood: onstage, Simon wanted to see the kind of thing Queen did, just as long as it wasn't Queen doing it. He had been raised on the Mercury ethos that 'anything worth doing is worth overdoing', but the problem latterly was that Freddie Mercury was as far from cool as the planet Mercury was from Pluto. To Simon, cool was everything. Image was everything, and the perception of his peers was the thing he worried about most.

Div wasn't winding Simon up with his simplistic explanation (well, maybe just a bit or he wouldn't be Div). Div listened to Queen because he liked their music. Loved their music. That was all. His overall rock'n'roll philosophy was also very simple: if it was loud, he generally liked it. This was nothing to do with volume. If you listened to The Clash on a pocket tranny, they would still be loud, just like if you listened to Belle and Sebastian at ten thousand decibels, they would still be quiet. Ray hadn't been round chez Div recently, but considered it unlikely he would own any 258.

B&S discs. Granted, Queen weren't the loudest thing in Div's student record pile, but they were loud enough, and that overblown grandiosity counted for a lot too.

Despite all of this, they each had enough in common musically (even that they were admitting to) for them to make the colossal but glorious mistake of starting a band. In retrospect, Ray could see that it was probably motivated by a subconscious awareness that there wasn't quite enough tension between them as things stood, and what the situation really needed was an undertaking guaranteed to push them over the edge.

It started innocently enough, one Sunday afternoon, but then alcohol got involved and foolish things were said and done. They'd spent the preceding Saturday in the QM, watching the 'Battle of the Bands', a monthly opportunity for student hopefuls to strut their stuff in front of apathetic afternoon drinkers. The Entertainments Convenor had cynically proposed this democratic slot as part of his election manifesto, winning him the vote of every chord-strumming wanna be on campus. In that respect, his victory was also his punishment.

The audience at these things tended to be made up of three factions, in ascending order of magnitude: friends of the performers along to offer moral support; folk looking for a quiet drink and a blether, who had failed to see the Convenor's single four-inch-square poster publicising the event in one (out of order) cubicle of the Gents' toilets; and rubber-neckers having a good laugh at the train wreck. Simon, Div, Ross and Ray entered in the second category, but had very soon transformed to join the third.

They were still talking about it late on Saturday night, Simon being inventively scathing about what they'd witnessed and the rest having their own digs when they 259.

were able to get a word in. Simon's scorn was unquestionably fuelled in part by frustration that these no-hopers had nonetheless managed to team up and get on a stage, something his own greater talents had thus far failed to achieve. He had been for a few auditions only to find, when he got there, that the existing members of the proposed band were 'total arseholes', which may or may not have been another way of saying he didn't get the nod. Either that or they weren't specifically looking for a lead guitarist/lead vocalist/sole lyricist/stage coordinator/cover designer/rock visionary at that particular moment.

The consensus that they could do better themselves led to Ray's imprudent admission that he had a drumkit back in Houston, and Div's astonishing revelation that he could play bass. He had chosen this instrument, as he claimed in typical Div style, because it had fewer strings than a normal guitar and was therefore less work. This turned out, also in typical Div style, to be deceptive, self-deprecatory mince. Div could play a standard six-string more than competently, but in aspiring to play along with his fave records, he had found it a sight easier to learn John Deacon's riffs than Brian May's.

Ray, for his part, had never laid claim to any musical talent, but he had been fairly blessed when it came to skills involving hand-eye coordination, not that it took much aim to hit a drum. His abilities at computer games, archery (which he took up at uni simply because it was on offer) and arguably even cartoons stemmed from a degree of natural dexterity that he had dedicatedly applied to no useful purpose throughout his adult life.

It was suggested by Simon that they get together first thing on Sunday for a jam session, what with there being 260.

a ready-made rhythm section in the house to join the aspiring axe duo of himself and Ross. Despite Ray's gross scepticism about how good an idea it would sound in the cold light of day, sure enough the Dark Man rose at the crack of half-eleven and borrowed his mum's car to ferry Ray's kit in from Ayrshire. They set up in Simon's room (naturally the biggest), Ray damping the kit with towels and jumpers, and got underway as soon as Div got back from his folks' place with his bass and a carry-out.

After half an hour of doing unspeakable things to Tommy Gun, they were ready to chuck it. Unfortunately, they persevered, and by half-ten they were all drunk enough to think they were beginning to sound not bad. By midnight, they had agreed to go in for the next month's Battle of the Bands 'just for a laugh', and by two o'clock they had a name. Well, actually, they had four names, with a decision deferred until the next session, when they all knew Simon would get his way.

He did. In preference to Slideshow (Ross, cool and simple), Manic Minors (Ray, after a ZX Spectrum game) and All Dead (Div, from a Queen song, natch), they were to be The Bacchae. No, really. It was the name of a play by Euripides, the title referring to a female cult in naked hedonistic frenzy, which was itself all very rock'n'roll, but the actual name stank. The Bacchae, for fuck's sake. Div said it sounded like something you needed ointment for.

When they first reconvened, the only dose of reality to puncture their plans was the remembrance that they were a fortnight from the end of term, so there was no Battle of the Bands to aim at until at least seven weeks hence. That left time enough - particularly including the Easter holidays - for something truly horrible to get underway.

Perhaps it would have been better if they had been 261.

utterly appalling, as opposed to just bad, as that way it would have soon petered out through lack of enthusiasm and mutual embarrassment. Ray and Ross certainly did their part, contributing sufficient mediocrity and borderline competence to puncture the ambitions of any self- respecting combo, but unfortunately Simon and even Div let the side down badly. Div, once the rust was shaken off, turned out to be a far better bass player than he had let on, and as for Simon, well, the guy could play guitar. There were people who could play the guitar and people who could play guitar, and with Simon there was no definite article. Between their unevenly matched talents, they had the basis for something that they were fairly confident wouldn't get them bottled off the stage.

To be fair, there was only so far you could go wrong with the classic four-piece line-up, as long as you knew your own limits and had realistic ambitions. And thereby hung the problem. Simon was an undeniably talented musician and had this grand, highly developed vision, but lacked the more immediate clarity to see that they weren't it. He had been cooking up his schemes for conquering the rock world for a frustratingly long time, and had such belief in himself that as soon as he had a quorate line-up, he just assumed the path was set. He also assumed that the rest of them would a) come to realise this; b) toe the line; and c) instantly turn into accomplished musicians.

His impatience was obvious in his insistence on the name. Talk about blowing your wad. His band, the band of his vision, were to be The Bacchae. Fair enough, everyone had a rock'n'roll dream. But most would surely bide their time a wee bit, rather than forcing the issue on their first student covers-band after what it would be generous to call one rehearsal. Simon's mind, though, was already years 262.

down the line. Within a fortnight, while the rest of them were optimistically talking about their first gig, he was talking about resenting his future fans for what they wanted to take from him.

'I hate all that deliberate hysteria. It really fuckin' offends me to think of these yahoos shoutin' for certain songs, Christ, demanding what they want to hear. You've spent ages puttin' a show together, but you've to abandon your playlist because they've decided what they want from your set? You're just supposed to perform for them on request. Do they think you're their personal lapdancer?'

All of which was bound to make for a very loud thud when he came back down to earth.

Ray found it difficult to admit to people that their glorified-jamsessionwithaspirationsofpub-rock was called The Bacchae, while Div refused to utter the name at all. Instead, he began referring to the band as The Arguments, which was far more appropriate, as they spent more time and energy doing that than on actually playing.

There was very little that they didn't all disagree on, but once Simon had unilaterally signed them up for the next BOTB, they had to decide what their set should comprise, and a stushie ensued that made what had passed already seem like a lost golden age of harmony and accord. While the other three traded suggestions that they thought might be mutually palatable, Simon was, as ever, operating on a different plane, and handed out screeds of photocopied lyrics; his idea of egalitarianism being that they all got a say in selecting which of his compositions would make up the playlist. When civil terms of address were reestablished, two or three hours later, it was suggested to Simon that they were less likely to go down like a cup of cold sick if they stuck mainly to songs people knew, maybe 263.

sneaking one original track into the set if they weren't getting too many missiles thrown at them.

Even Simon saw the sense in this, and the argument shifted from which of Simon's songs they would play to which of Simon's suggested covers they would play. In time, however, democracy prevailed, with results that made a fairly compelling argument for fascism. With all sense and judgement being sacrificed in the name of compromise, it was agreed not only that everybody should get to choose a song, but in the absence of any consensus on a lead vocalist, that they should each get to sing it too.

All four of them. Including Ray. In a twenty-minute set.

The Ents Convener supplied a minimal PA and a drumkit, making it clear that this was because he did not want the hassle of four different bands lugging their own equipment on and off the bar's tiny stage. Despite Simon's whines, they had agreed that this was fair enough, or rather it would have been if one of the amps hadn't blown in a vain attempt to produce feedback during the first mob's ridiculously overblown closing number. Amid Simon's glowering I-told-you-so's, and with the Convenor telling them they needed to be on at their allotted time or miss their slot, they had to make some quick decisions, something of a challenge given that the previous record for reaching agreement on anything was two days.

Ross made the apparently selfless gesture of saying that, as the second-string guitarist, he should be the one to lute the bullet'. It was only as the insincere 'Are you sure?'s and 'We'll make it up to you's were being muttered that it became clear he wasn't offering to miss out altogether; merely to go onstage with his axe plugged into the dead amp. Suffering the same muso-psychosis as Raymond the Singing Drummer, he still wanted his moment in the spotlight.

264.

Despite this, they opened almost passably, with Div on vocals for The Cure's Boys Don't Cry, a blatant crowd- pleasing gambit and one that was fairly difficult to really fuck up. Div's original, democratically allotted selection had been Funny How Love Is, until it was vetoed by Simon's very serious threat to disband the group rather than stand on the same stage as someone singing anything by Queen. After that, Ross signalled the downhill slide as his nerves prompted him to forget the lyrics to the second verse of A Song From Under the Floorboards, rescued partially by an improvised guitar solo from Simon that filled the gap almost quickly enough to seem intended.