they had little badges of like silver with different malchicks'
names on them - Joe and Mike and suchlike. These were sup-
posed to be the names of the different malchicks they'd
spatted with before they were fourteen. They kept looking
our way and I nearly felt like saying the three of us (out of the
corner of my rot, that is) should go off for a bit of pol and
leave poor old Dim behind, because it would be just a matter
of kupetting Dim a demi-litre of white but this time with a
dollop of synthemesc in it, but that wouldn't really have been
playing like the game. Dim was very very ugly and like his
name, but he was a horrorshow filthy fighter and very handy
with the boot.
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
The chelloveck sitting next to me, there being this long big
plushy seat that ran round three walls, was well away with his
glazzies glazed and sort of burbling slovos like "Aristotle
wishy washy works outing cyclamen get forficulate smartish".
He was in the land all right, well away, in orbit, and I knew
what it was like, having tried it like everybody else had done,
but at this time I'd got to thinking it was a cowardly sort of a
veshch, O my brothers. You'd lay there after you'd drunk the
old moloko and then you got the messel that everything all
round you was sort of in the past. You could viddy it all right,
all of it, very clear - tables, the stereo, the lights, the sharps
and the malchicks - but it was like some veshch that used to
be there but was not there not no more. And you were sort of
hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might
be, and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old
scruff and shook like you might be a cat. You got shook and
shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and
your body and your self and you just didn't care, and you
waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow, then
yellower and yellower all the time. Then the lights started
cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or, as it
might be, a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a
big big big mesto, bigger than the whole world, and you were
just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was
all over. You came back to here and now whimpering sort of,
with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo. Now that's
very nice but very cowardly. You were not put on this earth
just to get in touch with God. That sort of thing could sap all
the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
The stereo was on and you got the idea that the singer's
goloss was moving from one part of the bar to another,
flying up to the ceiling and then swooping down again and
whizzing from wall to wall. It was Berti Laski rasping a real
starry oldie called 'You Blister My Paint'. One of the three
ptitsas at the counter, the one with the green wig, kept push-
ing her belly out and pulling it in in time to what they called
the music. I could feel the knives in the old moloko starting
to prick, and now I was ready for a bit of twenty-to-one. So I
yelped: "Out out out out!" like a doggie, and then I cracked
this veck who was sitting next to me and well away and
burbling a horrorshow crack on the ooko or earhole, but he
didn't feel it and went on with his "Telephonic hardware and
when the farfarculule gets rubadubdub". He'd feel it all right
when he came to, out of the land.
"Where out?" said Georgie.
"Oh, just to keep walking," I said, "and viddy what turns up,
O my little brothers."
So we scatted out into the big winter nochy and walked
down Marghanita Boulevard and then turned into Boothby
Avenue, and there we found what we were pretty well looking
for, a malenky jest to start off the evening with. There was a
doddery starry schoolmaster type veck, glasses on and his rot
open to the cold nochy air. He had books under his arm and a
crappy umbrella and was coming round the corner from the
Public Biblio, which not many lewdies used these days. You
never really saw many of the older bourgeois type out after
nightfall those days, what with the shortage of police and we
fine young malchickiwicks about, and this prof type chello-
veck was the only one walking in the whole of the street. So
we goolied up to him, very polite, and I said: "Pardon me,
brother."
He looked a malenky bit poogly when he viddied the four
of us like that, coming up so quiet and polite and smiling, but
he said: "Yes? What is it?" in a very loud teacher-type goloss,
as if he was trying to show us he wasn't poogly. I said:
"I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed
a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that still
reads, brother."
"Oh," he said, all shaky. "Is it? Oh, I see." And he kept look-
ing from one to the other of we four, finding himself now like
in the middle of a very smiling and polite square.
"Yes," I said. "It would interest me greatly, brother, if you
would kindly allow me to see what books those are that you
have under your arm. I like nothing better in this world than a
good clean book, brother."
"Clean," he said. "Clean, eh?" And then Pete skvatted these
three books from him and handed them round real skorry.
Being three, we all had one each to viddy at except for Dim.
The one I had was called 'Elementary Crystallography', so I
opened it up and said: "Excellent, really first-class," keeping
turning the pages. Then I said in a very shocked type goloss:
"But what is this here? What is this filthy slovo? I blush to
look at this word. You disappoint me, brother, you do
really."
"But," he tried, "but, but."
"Now," said Georgie, "here is what I should call real dirt.
There's one slovo beginning with an f and another with a c."
He had a book called 'The Miracle of the Snowflake.'
"Oh," said poor old Dim, smotting over Pete's shoulder and
going too far, like he always did, "it says here what he done to
her, and there's a picture and all. Why," he said, "you're
nothing but a filthy-minded old skitebird."
"An old man of your age, brother," I said, and I started to
rip up the book I'd got, and the others did the same with the
ones they had. Dim and Pete doing a tug-of-war with 'The
Rhombohedral System'. The starry prof type began to creech:
"But those are not mine, those are the property of the mu-
nicipality, this is sheer wantonness and vandal work," or some
such slovos. And he tried to sort of wrest the books back off
of us, which was like pathetic. "You deserve to be taught a
lesson, brother," I said, "that you do." This crystal book I had
was very tough-bound and hard to razrez to bits, being real
starry and made in days when things were made to last like,
but I managed to rip the pages up and chuck them in handfuls
of like snowflakes, though big, all over this creeching old
veck, and then the others did the same with theirs, old Dim
just dancing about like the clown he was. "There you are," said
Pete. "There's the mackerel of the cornflake for you, you dirty
reader of filth and nastiness."
"You naughty old veck, you," I said, and then we began to
filly about with him. Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort
of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his
false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the
pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush,
though they were hard bastards like, being made of some new
horrorshow plastic stuff. The old veck began to make sort of
chumbling shooms - "wuf waf wof" - so Georgie let go of
holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the
toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck
start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my
brothers, real beautiful. So all we did then was to pull his
outer platties off, stripping him down to his vest and long
underpants (very starry; Dim smecked his head off near), and
then Pete kicks him lovely in his pot, and we let him go. He
went sort of staggering off, it not having been too hard of a
tolchock really, going "Oh oh oh", not knowing where or
what was what really, and we had a snigger at him and then
riffled through his pockets, Dim dancing round with his
crappy umbrella meanwhile, but there wasn't much in them.
There were a few starry letters, some of them dating right
back to 1960 with "My dearest dearest" in them and all that
chepooka, and a keyring and a starry leaky pen. Old Dim gave
up his umbrella dance and of course had to start reading one
of the letters out loud, like to show the empty street he could
read. "My darling one," he recited, in this very high type
goloss, "I shall be thinking of you while you are away and
hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out
at night." Then he let out a very shoomny smeck - "Ho ho ho"
- pretending to start wiping his yahma with it. "All right," I
said. "Let it go, O my brothers." In the trousers of this starry
veck there was only a malenky bit of cutter (money, that is) -
not more than three gollies - so we gave all his messy little
coin the scatter treatment, it being hen-korm to the amount
of pretty polly we had on us already. Then we smashed the
umbrella and razrezzed his platties and gave them to the
blowing winds, my brothers, and then we'd finished with the
starry teacher type veck. We hadn't done much, I know, but
that was only like the start of the evening and I make no appy
polly loggies to thee or thine for that. The knives in the milk
plus were stabbing away nice and horrorshow now.
The next thing was to do the sammy act, which was one
way to unload some of our cutter so we'd have more of an
incentive like for some shop-crasting, as well as it being a way
of buying an alibi in advance, so we went into the Duke of
New York on Amis Avenue and sure enough in the snug there
were three or four old baboochkas peeting their black and
suds on SA (State Aid). Now we were the very good mal-
chicks, smiling good evensong to one and all, though these
wrinkled old lighters started to get all shook, their veiny old
rookers all trembling round their glasses, and making the suds
spill on the table. "Leave us be, lads," said one of them, her
face all mappy with being a thousand years old, "we're only
poor old women." But we just made with the zoobies, flash
flash flash, sat down, rang the bell, and waited for the boy to
come. When he came, all nervous and rubbing his rookers on
his grazzy apron, we ordered us four veterans - a veteran
being rum and cherry brandy mixed, which was popular just
then, some liking a dash of lime in it, that being the Canadian
variation. Then I said to the boy:
"Give these poor old baboochkas over there a nourishing
something. Large Scotchmen all round and something to take
away." And I poured my pocket of deng all over the table, and
the other three did likewise, O my brothers. So double
firegolds were bought in for the scared starry lighters, and
they knew not what to do or say. One of them got out
"Thanks, lads," but you could see they thought there was
something dirty like coming. Anyway, they were each given a
bottle of Yank General, cognac that is, to take away, and I
gave money for them to be delivered each a dozen of black
and suds that following morning, they to leave their stinking
old cheenas' addresses at the counter. Then with the cutter
that was left over we did purchase, my brothers, all the meat
pies, pretzels, cheese-snacks, crisps and chocbars in that
mesto, and those too were for the old sharps. Then we said:
"Back in a minoota," and the old ptitsas were still saying:
"Thanks, lads," and "God bless you, boys," and we were going
out without one cent of cutter in our carmans.
"Makes you feel real dobby, that does," said Pete. You could
viddy that poor old Dim the dim didn't quite pony all that,
but he said nothing for fear of being called gloopy and a
domeless wonderboy. Well, we went off now round the
corner to Attlee Avenue, and there was this sweets and cancers
shop still open. We'd left them alone near three months now
and the whole district had been very quiet on the whole, so
the armed millicents or rozz patrols weren't round there
much, being more north of the river these days. We put our
maskies on - new jobs these were, real horrorshow, wonder-
fully done really; they were like faces of historical per-
sonalities (they gave you the names when you bought) and I
had Disraeli, Pete had Elvis Presley, Georgie had Henry VIII
and poor old Dim had a poet veck called Peebee Shelley; they
were a real like disguise, hair and all, and they were some very
special plastic veshch so you could roll it up when you'd done
with it and hide it in your boot - then three of us went in.
Pete keeping chasso without, not that there was anything to
worry about out there. As soon as we launched on the shop
we went for Slouse who ran it, a big portwine jelly of a veck
who viddied at once what was coming and made straight for
the inside where the telephone was and perhaps his well-oiled
pooshka, complete with six dirty rounds. Dim was round that
counter skorry as a bird, sending packets of snoutie flying and
cracking over a big cut-out showing a sharp with all her
zoobies going flash at the customers and her groodies near
hanging out to advertise some new brand of cancers. What
you could viddy then was a sort of a big ball rolling into the
