I turned the wheel and I put my foot down hard upon the brake, but that bend was rather tricky at the very best of times.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’ went Norman.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaagh!’ I agreed.
I do have some recollection of the big lorry’s rear end overtaking us and all these trees appearing out of nowhere and then suddenly we were rolling over and then everything went rather dark.
We missed the Jolly Gardeners by inches, but we did hit that very picturesque-looking Tudor house opposite. The one with the carefully tended knot garden and the preservation order on it and everything.
It didn’t half make a noise, I can tell you.
I awoke to find that Norman and I were all tangled up together on the ceiling of the cab, which had now become the floor.
‘Are we dead then?’ Norman asked.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘We’re not dead. We’ve survived. We’re safe.’
Now, I don’t know why I said that. I know I shouldn’t have. I know, as we all know, that if you say that, then you leave yourself open for something really bad to happen.
You bring down upon yourself THE TRICK ENDING.
Don’t ask me why this is. Perhaps it’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something. But I did say it. And once I had said it, I couldn’t very well take it back.
‘What’s that funny noise?’ Norman asked. ‘That funny scratching noise?’
That funny scratching noise. Now what could that be?
Could that perhaps be one of the chimeras that had somehow managed to get aboard the big lorry and was even now making its wicked way along inside the back, before plunging into the cab to rip us limb from limb and gulp us down?
Well, it could have been, but it wasn’t.
It was just the wind in the trees.
Phew.
‘Tell me we’re safe,’ said Norman.
‘We’re safe,’ I said. ‘No, hang about. Can you smell petrol?’
27
The show’s not over ‘til the fat bloke snuffs.
Of course we didn’t die.
We weren’t blown to buggeration.
We were out of that lorry and into the Jolly Gardeners with seconds to spare before the fuel tank exploded.
There was hardly any damage at all done to the pub. The Tudor house took most of the blast. Which was a pity, seeing as how it was so old and well kept and picturesque and everything.
But, as I’ve told you before, I’m very much a Victorian man myself. I could never be having with Tudor architecture.
Norman had no money on him, so I had to pay for the pints.
Not that there were any pints on offer. Not with all the electrics off. The pumps wouldn’t work any more.
‘All the bloody power’s gone,’ declared the landlord. ‘It will be that centennial mouse we’ve been hearing so much about.’
‘Millennium Bug,’ said Norman.
‘Who said that?’ asked the landlord. ‘I can see sod all in this dark.’
Actually it really wasn’t all that dark. The light from the burning Tudor house opposite offered a comfortable glow.
‘Just give us two doubles out of the nearest optic,’ I told the landlord. ‘And don’t trouble yourself with the ice and a slice.’
‘Coming right up.’ And the landlord blundered off.
‘Do you know what this reminds me of?’ said some old bloke in the corner. ‘This reminds me of the war. Why don’t we all have a sing-song, eh? Revive some of that old Blitz spirit, that made the working classes what we were and what we are today.’
‘And what are we?’ I asked.
‘Shufflers,’ said the old bloke. ‘Shufflers and proud of it.’
Well, that was good enough for me, so I sang along with the others. These were my people. I was a part of them and they were a part of me. I was home at last amongst my own. And we sang, our voices raised. A song that we all knew and loved. A song that meant so much to us.
It was a song of hope. An anthem. A song that said, in its way, everything there was to say about us.
There were tears in my eyes as we sang it.
‘Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Here we go, here we go, here we go-oh.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Here we go-oh, here we go.’
I forget how the second verse went.
What happened as the clocks struck twelve on that final night of the twentieth century has now passed into history. Oral history, that is. Because there is no other. Oral history, fireside tales, and no two tales the same.
As with the assassination of JKF, everyone remembers where they were on the night the lights went out.
Because, for most of us, they never went on again.
A chain, it is said, is only as strong as its weakest link. We learn that in infants’ school. So what of technology’s chain? All those systems, linked together? All those computer networks, exchanging information, feeding off each other’s data-flows?
Throughout 1999, the British government had worn its bravest face. At most, only one per cent of all systems will be affected, they said. A measly one per cent. Nothing much to worry about.
So only one link in every hundred.
But wouldn’t that mean that the chain would still snap?
As it turned out, of course, they were way off the mark. The agents of the Secret Government had been very thorough.
Nearly forty per cent of all vital systems failed.
Everything went down.
Everything.
Road-traffic signal systems: Gone.
Airport flight-control systems: Gone.
Railway point systems: Gone.
Telecommunications:Gone.
Banking systems: Gone.
Health-care facilities: Gone.
And they would all stay gone. Because all power had gone. The National Grid was dead.
And what about military hardware? What about their radar systems? And missile-tracking systems? And anti-missile-missile-launch systems? Did they fail too?
Oh yes, they failed.
In England everything switched itself off In Russia things were different. The Secret Government hadn’t troubled with Russia. Russia had so many clapped-out old systems that Russia would collapse without ‘help’.
Unfortunately, and evidently unforeseen, the sudden loss of power in Russia had the same effect upon some of the Russian nuclear arsenal as it had upon the Doveston’s dynamite.
Only five missiles went up. Which was pretty good, considering. The other 13,055 stayed on the ground. But once those five were in the air, that was it. You couldn’t bring them back. And you couldn’t telephone anyone to warn them they were on their way and say that you were very sorry and it had all been an accident and not to take it personally.
The West could do nothing to stop them.
And the West didn’t know they were coming, or where they were coming from.
The West was power dead. A great slice of it was in darkness: Auld Lang Syners halted in mid-flow; people searching around for candles and wondering how badly they could behave before the power came back on; pretty much everyone drunk.
And five nukes on the way.
They fell somewhat haphazardly.
The one that should have hit central London hit Penge. Which I’m told was a very nice place, although I feel disinclined to visit it nowadays.
Another hit Dublin. Which was bloody unfair. Because, come on, who have the Irish ever attacked, apart from the English? Nobody, that’s who.
Paris copped one. But bugger Paris.
The one that made it to America came down in the Grand Canyon. Causing no loss of life and no damage to property. Now was that fair, I ask you?
The last one came down upon Brighton. Brighton! Why Brighton! Why not Switzerland, or Holland, or Belgium. Or Germany?