Omally helped him up once more and dusted him down. "You didn't have it, Jim," he said softly. "And I heard the numbers you were mumbling. That was last week's lottery draw."

"It was? But I was there and I was all bandaged up and ..."

"Leave it, Jim. I've come to make you rich. I really have."

Jim shook his head, dragged himself back over the bench and sat down hard upon it. Omally joined him.

"Go on, then," said Jim. "Let's hear it."

John yanked Jim's book from his jacket pocket. It had about it now a somewhat dog-eared appearance.

"You've creased it all up," said Jim sulkily.

"Never mind about that." Omally leafed through the pages, then thrust the open book beneath Jim's nose. "Cast your Sandra's over this," he said.

"My Sandra's?"

"Sandra's thighs, eyes. I'm working on a new generation of rhyming slang, based upon the most memorable features of ladies I've known in the past."

A young man on a Vespa rode by and Jim made a low groaning sound deep in his throat.

"Go on," said Omally. "Take a look."

Jim took a look, although not with a great deal of interest. His eyes however had not travelled far down the page before an amazed expression appeared on his face and the words "Sandra's crotch" came out of his mouth.

"Sandra's what?"

"Sandra's crotch. It's all too much!"

"Well, that isn't quite how it works, but it has a certain brutish charm."

"This is barking mad," said Jim.

"Yes, there is a small brown dog involved."

"But it's a member of the ... I never knew they were born in Brentford."

"I don't think anyone did. And I don't think they know about that either."

"Chezolagnia? What does that mean?"

"You really don't want to know, Jim. Have a look at the photo on the next page."

"There's photos too?" Jim turned the page. "Sylvia's ..."

Omally put his hand across Jim's mouth. "Crotch was distasteful enough," said he.

"Mother," said Pooley. "John, this is dynamite. We'd end up in the Tower of London. Stuff like this could bring down the entire establishment."

"Couldn't it too," said Omally.

"Imagine if this fell into the hands of someone who had it in for the English."

"Imagine that," said John Omally, son of Eire.

"Oh no, John, you wouldn't? You couldn't?"

"No," said John. "I wouldn't and I couldn't. What a man gets up to in the privacy of his own love menagerie is his own business."

Jim turned another page, then went "Waaah!" and thrust the book back at John. "Take it away. Burn it. I wish I'd never looked."

John closed the book and tucked it back into his pocket.

"Then we're not rich at all," said Pooley with a long and heartfelt sigh.

"Oh yes we are."

"But you said you wouldn't and you couldn't."

"I was only warming you up. That isn't the bit of the book that's going to make us rich."

"You mean there's worse in there?"

"Not worse, Jim. And nothing like that at all. That was just a little footnote, but it set me thinking. What do you know about the Days of God and the Brentford Scrolls?"

"We did them at school. Something to do with Pope Gregory changing the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian which meant cutting eleven days out of the year and this batty monk from Brentford going on a pilgrimage to Rome to demand God's Days back."

"And?"

"Well, didn't the Pope get so fed up with him going on and on about it that he said the people of Brentford could have two extra days a year if they wanted them?"

"That was it, and gave him a special decree authorizing it."

"The Brentford Scrolls."

"Those very lads."

"But the monk was murdered when he got back home so Brentford never got the extra days that it didn't want anyway and everyone lived happily ever after."

"Well done, Jim. In a few short sentences you have reduced the most significant event in Brentford's history to a load of old cabbage."

"I'm sorry, but I fail to see the significance of this significant event. Especially how it will make us rich."

"Then allow me to explain. The Pope told the monk that Brentford could have two extra days a year, the Days of God, in perpetuity. But the option was never taken up. Now all this happened in 1582 and it's now 1997, four hundred and fifteen years later, which means ... ?"

"I haven't the foggiest," said Jim. "What does it mean?"

"It means that by the end of this year Brentford has eight hundred and thirty days owing to it. That's over two years, Jim."

"Do pardon me for missing the point here, John. But so what?"

"Jim, what is going to happen on December the thirty-first 1999?"

"A very big party."

"Correct. The millennial celebrations. The biggest, most expensive, most heavily funded bash in history."

"So?"

Omally threw up his hands. "So the people of Brentford are actually entitled to celebrate the millennium two years earlier than the rest of the world, by special decree of Pope Gregory. He reorientated the calendar and what he decreed goes."

Jim opened his mouth to say "So?" once more, but he said "Come again?" instead.

"You're catching on, aren't you, Jim? The Millennium Fund. Millions and millions of pounds, set aside for all kinds of projects and schemes. And the people of Brentford are actually entitled to grab it two years before anybody else."

"You have got to be jesting."

"All the details are in this book of yours. All we have to do is to quietly check whether the Pope's decree was ever revoked, which I'm certain it never was. And then we put in our absolutely genuine and pukka claim for millions."

"The Millennium Fund blokes will never swallow it."

"They'll have no choice, Jim." Omally pulled a crumpled piece of foolscap from his pocket. "Now I've drawn up a bit of an itinerary here. Obviously as co-directors of the Brentford Millennium Committee we will require salaries suitable to our status. How does this figure seem to you?"

Pooley perused the figure. "Stingy," said he. "Stick another nought on the end."

"I'll stick on two, to be on the safe side. So, we'll want a big parade and a beauty contest ..."

"Belles of Brentford," said Jim.

"Belles of Brentford. I like that." Omally made a note.

"And a beer festival," said Jim.

"Let's have two," said John, "again to be on the safe side."

"Let's have two beauty contests. Three, in fact. We'd be on the panel of judges, naturally."

"Naturally. And I thought we should build something. How about a new library?"

"What's wrong with the old one?"

"The heating's pretty poor in the winter."

"Right. Tear down the library, build a new one."

"OK," said Omally, making a tick. "That's the John Omally Millennial Library taken care of."

"The what?"

"Well, it will have to have a new name, won't it?"

"I suppose so, but if you're having a library named after you I want something too."

"Have whatever you like, my friend."

Pooley thought. "I'll have the Jim Pooley," said he.

"The Jim Pooley what?"

"No, just the Jim Pooley. It's a public house."

"Nice one. I'll join you there for a pint. Do you think we should tear all the flatblocks down and build some nice mock-Georgian terraces, or should we ..."

"John?" asked Jim.

"Jim?" asked John.

"John, about these Brentford Scrolls. The papal decree that papally decrees all this. Where exactly are the scrolls now?"

"Ah," said John.

"And what exactly does 'Ah' mean?"

"'Ah' means that when the monk got murdered, the scrolls disappeared. No one has actually seen them in over four hundred years."

Jim Pooley swung his fist once more at John Omally.

And this time he didn't miss.

7.

"Twenty of us in a ditch with just a bit of torn tarpaulin to keep the weather out." Old Pete slumped back in his chair, then, gaining strength from the reaction of his audience, after-office types who had popped into the Swan for a swift half, he gestured meaningfully with the spittle end of his pipe. "That's what I call hard times. None of this namby-pamby stuff about pyjamas and nightlights."

Old Pete had certainly known hard times. For after all, hadn't he grubbed in the fields for roots to feed his four younger brothers? And didn't he once live for three months inside a barrel, until his beard was long enough to hide the shame that he could afford no shirt to be married in? And when his uncle died in a freak indecent exposure / hedge trimmer accident, hadn't it been Old Pete who gathered up the pieces and dug the grave himself?

Old Pete had seen real poverty. His tales of one jam sandwich between six and four to a cup never failed to bring a tear to the eye of the listener and a free drink or two to himself.

"How come," asked Omally, who had heard it all before, "that out of the twenty of you down the ditch, not one had the nous to earn the price of a dosshouse bed for the night?"

"There is always some cynical bugger," said Old Pete, "prepared to spoil a good tale well told."

Omally led Jim up to the bar.