"Sorry?" said Norman.

"Amber bottle tops this week, red last week, green the week before."

"Oh yes," said Norman. "Amber this week. Don't serve anything else, will you?"

"I am a professional," said Neville. "Do I have to keep on telling you? And what would happen if I did make a mistake? It would hardly be the end of the world, would it?"

Norman did not reply.

The big brass band played the theme tune from Blue Peter. The world-famous Brentford Girls' School Drum Majorettes high-stepped and baton-twirled; carnival floats manned and womanned by Brentfordians who had actually spent their Millennium grant money on what they said they would followed behind.

These fine-looking floats were constructed to display tableaux from Brentford's glorious past.

Here was a great and garish Julius Caesar, fashioned from papier mache, dipping his toe in the Thames, prior to crossing it down by Horseferry Lane. Here were the king's men, ready to hammer the parliamentarians at the historic Battle of Brentford. Here too the Bards of Brentford, the poets and playwrights, the literary greats, born to the borough and now beloved the world over.

And there was, well, there was - er ...

Moving right along, here come the all-ladies over-eighties synchronized paragliding team.

And the band played "Believe It If You Like".

30.

Tour trucks rolled into Brentford. Mostly Bedford vans they were, all knocked and knackered about. They had the names of the bands who travelled within them spray-painted on the sides. There were also one or two of those VW campers. You know the ones, the old lads with the two-tone orange and cream colouring. The ones that German terrorists always drive in movies that have German terrorists in them. Have you ever noticed that? It's always two-tone VW campers. And if that's not a tradition or an old charter, or something, then gawd knows what it is.

Hollywood again, probably.

A big bad black Bedford van drew up outside the football ground and a man with considerable hair, considerable piercings, considerable tattoos and a bulge in his leather pants which merited considerable consideration stepped down from it.

He flexed his arms, which did not have particularly considerable muscles on them, and cried out to the groundsman who was lounging outside smoking a cigarette.

"We are the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death," he cried out. "And we have come for your daughters. Those we can't screw, we eat."

"It's a shame Jim couldn't get the Spice Girls," said the groundsman. "Park your old van round the back, mate. There's booze laid on in the bar."

A two-tone VW camper pulled up behind. It was driven by an Aryan type in a roll-neck sweater and denim cap. His name was Axel and he was a member of an organization known as the Black Umbrella Militant Faction Underground Communist Killers. Which was the kind of acronym that didn't bear thinking about.

"You round the back too, mate," called out the groundsman. "Park in the bay marked Terrorists."

The big parade kept on parading by and a carnival atmosphere was beginning to grow. Jim and John had splashed out on vast quantities of bunting and balloons to decorate the streets and the town looked a treat. And what with there being a free rock concert in the evening, and the free beer festival all day and night, and the free fireworks sometime later on, the numbers were swelling, as out-borough types arrived to lend their heartfelt support. There was even a hippie convoy on the way, with a chap called Bollocks driving the lead bus.

It certainly looked like being a night to remember.

At the Hartnell Millennial Brewery (two lock-up garages knocked into one, near the clapped-out trading estate down by the old docks), Norman tinkered happily away at his mobile de-entropizer.

It was constructed mainly from Meccano and mounted upon pram wheels. There was a conveyor belt running through it and the general principle was that you put the item you wanted de-entropized in at one end and it came out of the other - well, de-entropized.

Of course there was no end to the complications of gubbinry crammed inside. Lots of old valve-radio parts, whirring cogs and clicking mechanisms, all beavering away at the ionization of beta particles, thus creating a positronic catalyst, which bombarded an isotope with gamma radiation, giving rise to galvanic variations and the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter.

The way these things do.

Norman twiddled with his screwdriver and whistled an old Cannibal Corpse number. He set the dial to repeat, placed a long-defunct penny banger onto the conveyor belt, watched it pass into the de-entropizer and smiled hugely as, one after another, bright new reconstituted clones of the former firework poured out of the other end.

"I must get around to patenting this," said Norman Hartnell.

By eight o'clock the Road to Calvary was - filling nicely. The beer festival proper was in a big marquee in the Memorial Park. On the very spot, in fact, where the John Omally Millennial Bowling Green had been planned. And beneath the very tree where Jim had done his travelling in time. But what the marquee didn't have, but the Swan did, was Hartnell's Millennial Ale.

"Another bottle, Neville, please," said Old Pete, as he stood at the bar chatting with an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman.

"You were saying," said the Scotsman, "about your family."

"Oh yes," said Old Pete. "I come from a very musical family. Even the dog hummed in the warm weather."

"How interesting," said the Englishman.

"Oh yes, very musical. When I was only three I played on the linoleum. We had a flood and my mum floated out on the table. I accompanied her on the piano. Talking of pianos, the cat sat down at ours once and played a tune, and my mum said, 'We must get that orchestrated,' and the cat ran out and we never saw it again. Now my father, my father died from music on the brain. A piano fell on his head."

"Was that the same piano?" asked the Irishman.

"Same one," said Old Pete. "I never played it myself. I was going to learn the harp, but I didn't have the pluck."

"Might I just stop you there?" asked the Scotsman.

"And I was thinking of becoming a homosexual," said Old Pete. "But I was only half in earnest."

"I really must stop you there," said the Scotsman.

"Oh yes, and why?"

"Because you're telling such shite jokes."

"Here, look at that," said Old Pete, pointing to a nun riding by on a jester's back. "Is that vergin' on the ridiculous, or what?"

Omally pushed his way up to the bar. "Has Jim been in, Neville?" he asked.

The part-time barman flipped an amber cap from a bottle of Hartnell's finest and shook his Brylcreemed head. "Haven't seen him since the night before last," he said. "But shouldn't he be at the football ground organizing the free rock concert?"

"I'll go and see."

Like the Road to Calvary, the football ground was filling nicely. All traffic in the Ealing Road had come to a standstill as crowds milled pavement to pavement. Omally pushed his way into these crowds and into the floodlit stadium.

At the far end, flanked by mammoth speakers, Sonic Energy Authority were already on stage. The lead singer, the now legendary Cardinal Cox himself, was giving a spirited solo yodelling rendition of the Blue Peter theme.

"Far out," said a lady in a straw hat. "And in C."

"A minor," said Paul.

"Have you seen my friend Jim?" John asked the lady.

"My name isn't Jim," the lady said.

"No, I meant have you seen my friend whose name is Jim?"

"The one whose kitchen you blew up?"

"Yes," said Omally in a dismal tone. "That's the one."

"Actually, yes," said the lady. "I saw him down at the Butts Estate about half an hour ago."

"What was he doing?"

"He was being thrown out of a long black limousine."

"Ah," said John Omally.

Jim Pooley sat all alone in a corner of the Shrunken Head. But for Sandy the sandy-haired barman, Jim was the only person in the place. (Well, the Memorial Park was only a beer can's throw away, and the beer there was free.) Jim stared into his second double vodka. He was trembling from head to toe. Unshaven, pale of face, bruised and bloody about the nose regions, Jim looked the very picture of despair, which indeed he was. After giving Jim a warning kick or two in the ribs, Derek had driven the limousine back to Penge, supposedly to collect Suzy, who would be delivered safely to Jim as soon as he had delivered the unsafe contents of the nasty little bag to Professor Slocombe.

But what was Jim to do?

Could he really bring himself to destroy the Professor's ceremony and probably even the Professor himself, knowing as he did, or at least felt reasonably certain he did, that the ceremony, once successfully performed, would elevate mankind to some almost god-like state?

If it worked.

But then what if it wasn't going to work anyway? Then it really wouldn't matter if he destroyed it.

And ultimately what did matter, other than Suzy? Not much, in Jim's opinion. Not anything at all, in fact. When you love somebody as much as Jim loved Suzy, the rest of the world can go to hell.

Jim downed his second double. His fingers strayed to the little lump on his right temple. Fred's blokes knew exactly where he was at any given moment; he couldn't trick them. He could dump the horrible wriggling bag into the canal, but perhaps that had a transmitter stuck inside it too. He was in really big trouble here, and he was all on his own this time.

Jim looked down at his wrist, to the place where, had he worn a wristwatch, he would have worn it. The one he wasn't wearing now had belonged to John Omally. John had given it to Jim as a present.

"Nine o'clock," said Jim. "What am I going to do?"

"I'll tell you what we're going to do," said Derek.

"What are we going to do?" asked Clive.

Clive was driving, Derek was in the back. Fred was in the back too, and Suzy was sitting between Derek and Fred. They were out of Penge now and heading for Brentford.

"We're going to party big time," said Derek. "Roll into Brentford, let some blood and party big time."

"Shut your mouth," said Fred.

"Aw, come on, Fred." Derek waved his Uzi in the air. "We're mean sons of bitches, ain't we? We're the God-damn horsemen of the Apocalypse."

Fred made low growling sounds. "You can let as much blood as you like, once that Pooley has put paid to the Professor."

Derek cocked his weapon in the manner that sometimes got a cheap laugh. "I don't know why you've bothered with all this subtle stuff. You should have arranged a nuclear accident, flattened the whole frigging borough."

"Dear oh dear." Fred rolled his eyes. "You really don't get it, do you? When Pooley introduces our little bagged-up friend into the Professor's magic circle, the entire ceremony will be reversed. Goodness won't come flooding into the world. Its opposite number will. Mr Pooley will turn this entire planet into a seething cesspit of evil. Which is just the way my master wants it to be."

"You're one bad mother," said Derek.

"Yeah," said Fred. "Ain't I though."

There really didn't seem any way that Fred's car would actually be able to drive into Brentford. All the roads in were now blocked by other cars, engines off, doors locked, their owners and passengers gone to join the party. And it really was growing into some party. A PARTY! in fact. Folk from all around were descending on the borough, eager to engage in the free festivities. The novelty of this little west London town's genuinely celebrating the millennium two years before the rest of the world had a certain pulling power.

Fred's limo ground to a halt. "Get a move on," said Fred.

"I can't," said Clive. "The traffic's all snarled up."

"Then put the car into overdrive."

"Overdrive? What good's that if I can't move?"

"Didn't you ever see that film The Car?"

"I did," said Derek. "Absolute corker. This big evil black car comes out of the desert and wipes out all these people in a little mid-west American town. And The Car is really the Devil."

"Wasn't Bradford Dillman in that?" asked Clive.

"Nah, Bradford Dillman was in Bug."

"Now that was a good movie."

"The Swarm was better."

"The Swarm was crap."

"Shut it!" shouted Fred. "What I am trying to say to you, Clive, you little twat, is that you're driving The Car. Stick it into overdrive."

"Overdrive," said Clive, finding the switch. "Overdrive, OK."

Clive flipped the switch and The Car rose up and crunched over the roofs and bonnets of the un-parked cars.

"Nice," said Fred.

"Rock'n'roll," said Derek.

"Let's all Rock'n'roll," cried the lead singer of the Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis. "This one's called 'Happy in the World'."

The crowd roared approval and the Lost T-shirts launched into a classic.