Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [17]
mostly on a porcine theme - just to show that they had won the day really.
Derek Pole couldn’t believe their passivity. One arrest for drunken and disorderly behaviour, and a few jeering anti-police songs. That was hardly the anarchy he was trying to instigate, was it? He climbed on to a low wall that ran alongside the cul-de-sac and waved his arms at the dispersing crowd.
‘This ain’t over yet! Don’t let them corral you like bloody sheep!
Remember, today the streets were ours, and not the council’s! We had a major victory and we can do more!’
A protester with green spiked hair and Machine Gun Etiquette painted on his leather jacket turned and stared at the protest organiser. ‘A cul-de-sac was ours, today, Derek. A cul-de-sac that no one ever uses. They herded us in here like schoolboys at assembly time, and you know it.’
Pole snarled at the protester. ‘Yeah, and you let ‘em! All of ya!
We could have sealed off the city centre. We could have stopped traffic for a whole bloody day if you had just listened to me; if you hadn’t all been so apathetic.’
‘Do yourself a favour and go home, Derek. We did our best.’ The punk turned his back and headed off with the rest of the 45
protesters. Derek stood on the wall like a failed general haranguing a deserting army, and saw that the police were climbing into their riot vans, having decided there was going to be no more disturbance here today. The final insult. They weren’t even waiting for him to leave!
Derek climbed down from the wall, conscious that his face was burning, and threw his cigarette stub after the departing Machine Gun Etiquette jacket. Bastards! Trying to muster as much dignity as he could, he strode towards the mouth of the cul-de-sac, past the few remaining police officers who were putting away emergency traffic cones and cracking jokes about the unconventional dress of the Streets Are Ours activists. He spotted a telephone box across the main road leading to New Street Station - the protesters’ intended target for isolation - and trotted over to it.
He thumbed in some coins and dialled. It was not a call he was looking forward to. Somebody was going to be decidedly unhappy with today’s lacklustre results. The protest had hardly brought one of the busiest zones of Birmingham city centre to a standstill as had been the desired intention. He was going to look like a right prat. And, unlike the police, somebody was not going to be in the mood for laughing.
‘Here’s to you all then,’ Kane said, raising his pint and toasting the lunch-time drinkers. ‘Here’s to every last miserable, spineless one of ya!’ He grinned wolfishly and glared round defiantly as he leant against the bar of the Falcon. His long dark hair framed an angular face coarsened by stubble and bad humour. He had their attention, all right, and he was ready to take on anyone who dared give him any lip back. Not cos he was particularly hard, but because he was particularly drunk. A few of the drinkers pretended to ignore him, but he heard Buster Egan, a meathead who - so the village gossip went - was knocking off a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl, call him a ‘tosser’, and that just made him grin even more.
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‘You and me both, Buster, old chap,’ he called back. He gulped at his Old Peculiar and waited for the big man to come for him.
!minty Turrock held Buster back, muttering something in his ear.
I think you’ve had enough, Kane.’ Trevor the landlord was looming above him, head just shy of the rafters he was that tall.
‘Do you, Trevor?’ Kane put his beer down. He dragged a cigarette from its