Twaddle Not yet! Not yet Cecil but that will change when I become the borough’ s First Citizen. Pickles Twaddle took the little man by the arm. They both supped up and left and it was just in time for at that moment Wild Will Tucker awoke, scratched his gools, wiped his nose and swore vengeance on Glen Campbell for the massacre at Glencoe, before ordering another double-whiskey and dropping off to sleep again.
ON THE VILLAGE GREEN WITH THE PUMP
Pickles I arrived early for the big meeting and my showdown with that little whippet, Cretin. An old cart was propped up on the‘ Village Green with the Pump’, with three beer-crates acting as steps. The Village Green with the Pump is Plonkton’ s answer to Speaker’ s Corner in London’ s Hyde Park. Four more beercrates were in the cart and I took them to be seats. Perkin Snipes, a captain in the Army and Navy Stores, was there. He was standing beside that big Scot, we met in the Speakeasy Club, Wild Will Tucker. Tucker, it was said, once sailed on the SS Bloody Reaper- he was a hard man, a deck fighter. The name of‘ Wild Will Tucker cropped up with such as‘ The Bull Ferguson’ and‘ Sergeant Duncan Buttass’, in conversations of awesome street fights. Those were the days when big men battled for supremacy on that very spot- the Village Green with the Pump’. He is known, in these parts, as the man who had a harrowing encounter with the ' Marie Celeste '. The Tinker Street Non-subscribing, Salvation Army Band were gathered around the old cart. They were playing a mixture of ' Danny Boy ' and what bits and pieces of ' Rule Britannia ' they could remember. They referred to themselves as‘ Non-subscribing’ because they preferred to sup the money they collected. They were lead by an old Ulsterman, with the name of Billy Gargoyle. Billy Gargoyle played the drum but was also an excellent fiddler. None of the rest of the band had a note in their heads. Billy is also known as ' The man whose memory goes back to 1690 ' A shouting, bellowing, singing, swaying mob of drunken‘ Cidermen’ crashed through the doors of the‘ Cosh and Jemmy’. They then slopped and smashed their way along Lower Main Street, kicking over bins, deck chairs and lollypop men. They were lead by Olaf Gallowsbird. His pint of scrumpy slopped down his chin, down his jumper and dripped unto the prostrate lollypop men. They congregated around the old cart ' roughing up ' the Tinker Street Non-subscribing, Salvation Army Band, in the process. Gallowsbird Speak your words men! Speak your words! Cidermen Duke! Duke! We want the Duke. Pickles Marmaduke Twaddle had been putting the finishing touches to himself in the public toilets in Daffodil Place. He came around the corner. He was geared-out in an evening-suit and had a big blue rosette the size of a dinner-plate, hanging over his fat belly. Twaddle waved his stubby little hand as he took exaggerated strides. He walked like that because some one had told him that:’ big men take big strides.’ He stood on a beer-crate, on top of the old cart, taking in the roaring and cheering, which he mistook for adulation. Eventually he put his hand up for silence, but the noisy Cidermen kept on clapping and shouting: Cidermen Duke! Duke! We want the Duke. Gallowsbird That is the bleeding Duke! Stop speaking your words! Shut your gobs! Pickles Billy Gargoyle, the Ulsterman, was laying into his big drum at fever pitch. Gallowsbird Billy- Beat the drum slowly. Pickles Big Olaf bawled into the old man ' s lug hole.
Twaddle picked up his loud hailer- a rusty milk jug with the bottom knocked out. The man with the fat ass