PART TWO: THE SABBATH

After that little expose into the uglier side of phannish life, more philms. "You must see "Godzilla vs. The Thing,"' sez Goblin, "it's superb.' Well, it wasn't bad, and good for a laugh I suppose. One good part was when The Thing (as it liked to be known) flashed overhead, riding shotgun in the sky, the down blast from its wings swept the forest and undergrowth like hurricane winds. Quite impressive. Good ol' God got it with a squirt of monster fly-killer though. (Too much..!)

Recollection returns as I come out of deep shock sometime in the afternoon, marching in to find Presford 'n' Colley, and Goblin 'n' Dave Douglass infesting the basement bar yet again. There occurred various non-happenings, such as Presford telling us how he'd marched into the main lounge, Ethel The Phrog in hand, announced everyone with zapguns was going to be shot, and, getting no answer, as he was marching out again being bombarded by a sudden fusillade of plastic balls from three or four concealed zapguns. (Or was that another time?)

Sometime around teatime an expedition was mounted to liberate a local Chinese restaurant of some of their stewed roaches; Presford, Colley, Dave & Goblin set out with me. Simply getting out for a walk was a zestful event on its own. Coming back, I had An Idea. The street was one of those one way systems, with square steel railings along the pavement. Staggering into the middle of the completely empty road, I whipped out my camera. While the idiots snarled, clawed, and made phools of themselves crowding down behind the bars, I squatted phoolishly in the roadway, trying to get everyone in view, shouting directions for Dave bloody Douglass to get fucking down, cos the stupid beggar kept standing up and walking about. Whilst this lengthy and slightly drunken process was going on, I was ever aware of a distant roaring sound, rather like the revving up before a Grand Prix start. Suddenly, with a screech of rubber, hundreds of cars came roaring around the corner, where an unseen traffic light had been holding the tide back, racing at a panic stricken, half kneeling me, horns blaring. Grimly I gritted my gums as the torrent thundered alarmingly past on either side, ignoring the paroxisms of laughter doubling up Goblin, and tried to wave Dave back into view. Silly phools-couldn't they see I was trying to get a picture? The damn thing didn't come out of course. Something about using a flash in broad daylight.

Then there was the phanquet. Nobody with any sense went, of course. I can remember going along half way through the speech to stand at the door listening, and feeling glad I wasn't trapped in that huddles mass of hufanity. A guy standing next to me, stereo headphones and intent look, playing a sound recording level board like an electric organ, with leads snaking off into the merry throng. After a moment of this I fled the scene and sought sanctuary in darkest Level 7.

"What's happening upstairs?" asked Brian Aldiss, who noticed me standing to, off the bar, guns pointing at the shore. "A guy's twiddling with his knobs and they're all clapping", I told him. "It's a conditioned reflex really.." he might have said, but then again, should anyone take exception to this, it might have been someone else now. I forget. "Yeah, just like monkeys.." I intoned, and moved a step or two. Which ended that rather boring tete-a-tete with, come to think of it, the second best SF writer in All Britain, and one of the top six SF writers of all time. A sensawunda touch has just fallen on me from the highflying bird of thought, as should be obvious; when all of us are dead, that guy's name will still (?) be burning brightly...... Now why didn't I ask him what he thought of FOULER? Or MACROCOSM? That would have been good for a laugh at least. Or traditional quo vadis? Or thrust incomprehensibly typed sheets, dripping fresh from the horrors of South Shields, County Durham, into his glasses: "Whaddya think of this, huh? There's this guy, see, who has an esper talent for tuning into and/or changing Zeitgeists of society, and he's exiled on this tiny lost enclave of future medievalism, half the galaxy away, and he's five hundred years old, and rides dragons and telepath poetesses, and by now thinks he's Hamlet and Lord Byron, and Christopher Marlowe cos he's gone screwy, see, and makes everyone else think so as well, and..." The chances that slip by at cons. . .

And now, a sercon interlude in this otherwise post-MALFUNCTION dark wood of the faanish soul:

"Thunder and lightning. Enter Ariel, like a harpy; claps wings upon the table; and, with a quaint device, the banquet vanishes.

Ariel; "You are three men of sin whom Destiny - that hath to instrument this lower world and what is in't - the never surfeited sea hath caused to belch up you." (Exeunt Pickersgill, Kettle, and Brosnan, stage trapdoor.)

Somewhere around here I swear I left a conrep. The cheese rolls must have got it . . .

Meanwhile, back in the lazy-b bar, Goblin was in a state of Hall-like drunkenness, propping up the bar counter. The Teddy Bear doesn't laugh, he giggles, a sound such as made by thirteen year old teenyboppers (God, those thirteen year old teenyboppers - ulp!). As Goblin leaned back against the bar, Pickersgill, well-oiled himself, prodded the giggling Goblin in the crotch; "Yes, he is rather small, isn't he?" Kettle held out his hands like that robot on 'Lost In Space' (remember?) and made pincer movements with his fingers and thumbs. "Put both your hands like this", he told Goblin, "and click them occasionally. . " This, probably the best line in the entire Con, later proved to be a gross compliment, as those who know the uncensored true account of the communication with other whirls experiments of late Sunday night, will be aware.

Later, or previously, I don't think it was the same occasion, I devilmaycare flung down a fistful of excess quotecards on the barcounter near the carefully guarded rum & cokes of the Pickersgill/Kettle double act, with an instruction, completely ignored I should think, to scatter them where ye may. Pawing through the roughly scribbled cardboard confetti Kettle stopped, amazed. "Hey, this is a good line.. " he accused. (It was: "Hall's mother had an abortion. It's name was John". )( So much for tumour..)

The Buttery Bar, about eight, nine, later that evening...The Buttery was a sort of restaurant bar on the same semi-basement level as the bar I've designated Level 7 to distinguish it from the cocktail bar and the main lounge, both of which opened off the main lobby upstairs. The Buttery was also the assembling point for the local cohort of the Gay Liberation Front. You might say it was a "Camp Concentration". Huh huh (Joke specially inserted for Archie Mercer. . . ) The fact that the appropriately entitled Blossoms is well known in Chester for this (saieth Goblin, who knows a lass who hails from Chester) and most importantly, had no student union type lounges with bars such as the Giffard had, where mobs could mob, packs could gather, and herds shoal, not to mention whoever controlled the air conditioning in Level 7 had been reading too much of "The Drowned World", made the hotel a crap choice for a Con, and what idiot picked it anyway? Mind, I must admit, apart from the above complaints and one or two being passed through Ratfandom, as usual there was little indeed to shit on the con committee. The staff were actively friendly, rather than genially tolerant.

Well anyway, it was a queer situation, a rum do as the peasants say. I'm not too sure which of the two corners of the room would have appeared the least conducive to human habitation to the mundane grey regulars of the Blossoms. There was a flock of silk-cravatted pretty boys fluttering in one corner, and in the other squatted or collapsed Troll Phandumb, a motley and very loose coalition (very motley too, come to think of it) of "never-say-shit" henchphen, drinking to the memory of John Hall and other improbabilities. There was Gregory (Mad Monk) Pickersgill, Leroy 'Desperate Dhan' Kettle, John Brosnan making obscured motions with his rune-umbrella under the table, which disposes of the traditional; Pete Roberts, crouched over a non-phannish Guinness bottle, which disposes of the serious; Presford, Colley and Dave, who aren't really up to mention; Peter Darling (needless to say, nobody spoke his name too loud in the Buttery) who was Australian, but possibly that's not his fault; Piggy, who, like horse muck, was always around; and "some unknown stupid Scotch neo" as Williams described him, though Goblin didn't want to have his name mentioned, I realise at this juncture I'm thinking of at least two, three, occasions, only two of which could have been on Sunday, but then, so what??

Actually, at first, I was convinced some unknown fans must be looning about - the high pitched voices and silk cravats were a shade too ridiculous. Goblin said they were deliberately camping it up. What comes of staying at Butlin's I guess. "We can do without the insults, Tiger", one reproved the Teddy Bear as they were standing together at the bar, thus giving birth to yet another Phannish ByWord. Pickersgill told us this celluloid anecdote about a queer's cinema he and Kettle had visited in Londres. The management had put up a sign outside stating that the changing of seats during performances was not approved of, but as soon as the show started, in the heated darkness, scores of murky figures could be seen getting up, changing seats, and getting up again. Legend had it that the police had raided the joint one night, and when the houselights were turned on, which no-one had done in decades, fifteen people were discovered in the five cubicles of the bogs.

Exactly what Pickersgill and Kettle were doing there I'm not too sure, tho I asked twice. "Experience, my boy..", you will admit is pretty ambiguous.

Anyway, so Presford (-???-) (yes, must have been) had this idea for a whip round. Despite the fact Lynda Partington refused to wear her black leather underwear, by passing the beanie round and throwing in our five bobs or whatever, enough bread was amassed from most of Buttery Bar Fly Phandumb to sponsor the room 72 drunkfest later that night. Whose idea that was I can't remember either, tho it would seem either Piggott or Mauler, since those were the two paying for the room Gannetphandom's expeditionary force was freeloading in, and both of them have that almost phrantic eagerness to be a Big Noise Part "on the English country scene" as they used to say in Robin Hood.

"Okay, gimme five minutes to sober up", says Presford, becoming silent and concentrating on the table for a moment, giving an impression of meditative processes or Mysterious Mental Powers (any mental power Presford's got must be very mysterious indeed.)

And we were off. Lisa'd said P.E.P. was a nutter at the wheel, so I suppose we should have been warned. Careering through the midnight streets of Chester, scaring a 1936 Hispano-Suiza limousine-load or two of Thompson-clutching New Worlds fans off the field of battle, it was another Memorable Time. In the back squatted Mauler, Dave and Colley, completing the rather monotonous line up of Van Phans. When Presford finally slumped across the wheel, eyeballs rolling vacantly, and we screeched to a halt at the curb. I wound down the window and asked two passing lasses where the nearest beer shop was, with a faint sense of deja vu. They told us where to go, rather helpfully truth to tell, though it still took interminable revolutions around Chester before we found the place. By the time we'd woken up the driver to get going again, the lasses had walked on maybe fifteen yards or so. As we began rolling, slowly picking up speed, I had Another Idea. Leaning out of the window with me camera, I phlashed them as the dark bulk of the van slowly accelerated past. The groundlings began falling about at this piece of pointless Silliness, of course. Looking back through the rear window, the dimly made-out figures of the two lasses were seen, standing stock still on the pavement, looking at each other, dazzled no doubt by the sudden explosion of blinding light in the Stygian Darkness of downtown Chester. (Hey, didn't someone just take a photograph of us....??") And, natch, that photograph didn't come out either. I'd swear I'd imagined all this Con business if it wasn't for the scars.

While the phantom van driver pulled in to see how wife and kids were doing at the bed and breakfast place (Ritchie Smith calls them bawding houses, cos he's read 'Measure For Measure' as well) I took the opportunity to get out of the van, which was just a small two-door affair, the sort electricians are likely to ride around in, not a big Bedford or Thames, fall down, regain my feet, and stagger over to a wall to relieve myself. After a moment I heard a strange yet oddly familiar sound and looked up to see a line of fire stitching toward me along the wall, just above head height. It was Mauler, contorting himself to get to the window and see me, using Dave's gun to direct enfilading fire at my unarmed and preoccupied self. Despite the saturation fireplay and close range, such was the lack of gunnery ability and such was my skill at evasion maneouvers without moving my feet that not even so much as a near miss was scored. Goblin has since suggested to me, before he collapsed under a table, that I had a means close at hand, despite having left my zotgun in the glove compartment, to silence his guns so to speak. This merely confirms what I've always suspected about Goblin's lack of finesse. I mean, there are some things that are just not done. After all, Presford has to use that van for work you know. In any case the thwarted cheap-rate rerun of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre was soon abandoned and Van Phandom trooped out like an intoxicated juvenile jazz band (juvenile being the operative word) to join intoxicated juvenile me at the wall in my silent protest.

Getting the show on the road again.. Saw a crater in the sun, a thousand miles of moonlight later, before returning to the Blossoms heavily laden with a cargo of Big Four cans. Bloody awful stuff too, Caskette, though I don't suppose many were noticing by midnight Sunday. Really metallic. When they tried putting Brown into cans they usually got a similar piss off as regards the taste.

Smuggling the beer into the hotel, inside copies of MACROCOSM ("the only thing it's good for.." sez Stockport phandumb, but then, how many fanzines can be said to have made an excellent room party possible, eh? EH?) fell largely to me, with a kind of fantastic inevitability. The others slipped off, one by one, with remarkable skill. Some nonsense about an auction. I took the opportunity, not wishing to buy old phanzines with real money, to flake out on the bed, trying to get some body-tissue conserving rest. My relaxation was interrupted by Piggy and Mole returning, lugging armfuls of ancient phanzines. These they squatted over, as if scrivening, mumbling magic words to themselves. Sometimes a hoarse cry,in a cracked voice, of " A RETRIBUTION.!" would go up, followed by much aweing and show of sensawunda. Phans aren't strange, they're just slightly ridiculous. Luckily little Dave, who also wandered in, had left his copy of "This Immortal" lying about and I was able to give myself a shot of Zelazny. I was beginning to feel the need for a phix. Good stuff you know, gosh wow.

Then there was the party, or rather, The Party. Things became confused, as the old jeu de mot goes, but some flotsam of memory remain on the surface floating in the greasy oil slick of drunken haze, after coherence went down with all hands.

People came rockin' it in two by two, or sometimes five by five. Assume Presford and Colley as part of the background noise; then imagine the discordant bassriff of Pickersgill, Goblin and the watching lass whose name is subjudice at time of writing. Greg, capering well, sitting in a plastic padded chair with a bottle of home brew wine stuck between his legs in characteristic pose, came to an exaggerated climax using some kind of medieval torture complex corkscrew device. A good laugh.

The demi-gallon cans were rolled out, and the first two 'Growler' and 'Prince of Peace' opened up. People, people, people. Something fannish this way comes. Who was the Liverpool fan from the Elder Days, who laughed uneasily, rather uncertain of the drunken clownery and all, but handed out bottles of very drinkable blackcurrant wine homebrew, which Greg or Goblin entreated me earnestly to try. Amazing stuff it seemed at the time, rather sickly after the first half bottle but very assimilatable as it was heralded. Was he Harry Wardle? Mauler says Harry Wardle. (Who's Harry Wardle?) What was I laughing with Ramsey Campbell's wife about, sitted at the foot of Piggy's bed, and when? Wasn't that later? An illustrated Pete Weston appearing, with a cast of thousands, in the doorway. Surely that was later? When did Kettle appear, was that with Brosnan and the performing umbrella?? Who let Holdstock in? I don't remember Dave Rowe and Heather? who?, but there they all are, recorded in glorious technicolor. Any why was Piggy strangling Kettle?

Before the carnage began I sought a fortified position on one of the beds. Sitting with my back propped up against the headboard, legs stretched out on the bed, it was an incredibly comfortable position to soak your head in. By my side I had my fully primed zotgun, in a plastic bag so the bed wouldn't get damp. Underneath the bed at the other side, hidden by a niche in the wall the bed receded into, I had stashed away at least one of the Big Four cans and a couple of bottles for a rainy day. When Mauler and Holdstock came around asking what had happened to the rest of the booze, I displayed mystified innocence but Mauler, crawling about on the floor and under beds, for which he is naturally endowed and of which he gets lotsa practise (due to the husbands of all those married women) eventually found my stockpile. Needless to say he didn't get all of the stuff, but I didn't tell him that.

Presford slumped in similar fashion on either the other bed or the starboard side of the same one, soaking the bedding with his Ethel-the-Phrog. The beds were almost exactly facing the door, which was advantageous as it meant, after the Party had reached its optimum size, or for any other good excuse, whenever familiar figures of fans appeared in the doorway, Presford and I would take it in turns to dissuade the drunks, dwarfs, dissolutes, degenerates, persistent poor punks, or downrightly drunken debauchers staggered, uncomprehending, as ones incapable of their own distress, about in the localised rain shower, both of us would join fire to drive them off. Such was the case with Brosnan and Kettle. They had, I believe, made one or two attempts to re-enter the party, when bulging brains busman Brosnan begat a bloody brilliant bright idea (blast the bearded bugger). Appearing, unabashed and unpenitent behind an unfurled unlicenced umbrella, he slowly advanced into the room, being pushed on from behind by a similarly crouching Kettle. Foiled again... The facts of the matter are no longer clear to me but Umbrella Phandom's escapades were not entirely successful: somehow Brosnan ended up with an inverted umbrella (well, he is Australian..). This black manifestation, not entirely to his wishes I suspect, received rather rough handling during the party, what with people kicking it, hitting each other with it 'n' all. Its slow transformation from the merely inverted (incredibly funny though it looked, sticking stock upright in the air) to the completely busted, disjoint and broken, was somehow strangely poignant. Kettle took to carrying it, and waving it about. As he carried it, slung on his shoulder like a rifle, it looked like some monster black spiderbat, speared by a swordstick. From the way it spasmodically jerked and clattered, loose black-webbed spars falling from one tangled spastic position to another, it didn't look completely dead, either. Presford mentioned to me while Kettle carried it draped over his shoulder, that he's pissed on it while it was trying to hide in the bathroom. Whether this tale was true or not is impossible to say, enough beer bavin..? been spilt on it, and Presford being, well....

Then Greg Pickersgill tried to expose himself. Looming outta the drunken haze, he came hunching towards me sitting on the bed. Only the imperceptible shaking of his hunched set shoulders betrayed he was taking the piss. With the characteristic drunken Neanderthal expression showing, he grabbed hold of the top of his trousers with one hand and unzipped his fly with the other. He loomed closed, shaking slightly.. ."Aaaagh.." I cried, and leapt off the bed before further developments came to hand. I realise now I should have merely grabbed my camera and my water pistol of course. Still.. (At least, I hope Pickersgill was joking...)

Other things happened, some of them daft, some of them violent. Like Kettle wanting Piggy to eat a wine glass. He could at least have ground it up real small and slipped it in his beer first. The sacrifice of human blood may have summoned more Powers than we thought to the occasion, for Aldiss and Harrison appeared in a flash of sulphurous blue light, supporting each other. Wild rumours spake of the Moorcock riding out...(Or was it the ahcidflash getting to me?) It's all written in the quasars...

Kettle tried to squirt me (the nerve of the joker) and we fell to grappling, John Wayne style (should I have said Kirk Douglas style?'?). There we were, fists 'n' wrists locked, I standing by the side of the bed, trampling on him, and him squirming on the ground, kicking up at me (could have been nasty), I called a cease after a while, suddenly overcome by the childishness of it all, but it seemed the obvious sort of thing to do at the time.

Then there was come dancing with Greg & Piggy. This began as each of them pressing one of their feet against one of the other's feet, sole to sole, and balancing unsteadily on the remaining one. The sight of these two, the tall, almost serious, concentrating Piggy, and the short, hairy, dirty suede enshrouded, rumdumb Poison Dwarf, hopping about at feet's length on one leg was something to see. It was stupid, but really something. Tee hee.

Mauler's flash did not work of course-I'm not at all sure the flashcube was supposed to revolve freely like the Magic Roundabout. I overcame this slight technical hitch but they'd by then reversed direction and begun dancing cheek to cheek, as it were. Thus they posed when the eye of the camera captured the moment. As a point of disinterest, I had my sister pick up the developed films from the chemists, and she foolishly went through them in the shop to see what sort of things went on at Cons, "what with this snap, and the one of Ian "saucy boy" Williams and all, she had quite an embarrassing time laughing it off with the nosey female counter assistant.

And then silly John Piggott and Silly Leroy Kettle bust me treasured zotgun. Broke the ring-vaned last inch of the muzzle clean off. Ghod knows what they were trying to do with it.

And then there was the incident of the clock, Fred Hemmings had brought along his infamous cardboard grandfather clock, which he'd entered into the phancy-dress competition as a time machine, a nice touch. At least I think Fred Hemmings was the one who'd brought it along. It could have been only someone disguised as Fred Hemmings disguised as a grandfather clock disguised as a time machine, nothing's improbable. Meanwhile, while we have just been trying to clarify this point, Kettle had mistaken the empty clock as female and therefore, in rapid progression, proceeded to (A) "chat it up" (B) attempt to rape it. One minute Kettle was. just standing there, beer glass in hand, with clock, and the next thing anyone knew, Kettle and Clock both simply toppled, like a felled tree. After the dust of this comedown had settled, the Kettle could be seen lying on the floor, half on top of Clock, still rapidly slurping from his beer mug in an intent and exaggerated manner.

I wonder how it is that this epic clownery, not to mention stuntfanship, hasn't been mentioned in a conrep yet, as it is the one thing everybody who was there to witness seems to speak of about the con. Clock wondered too.

"This room party is the best thing in the whole con, so you'd better make the most of.it..": T. Penman.

Piggy wrote that down on me piece of card; not because it was one of my memorable quotes, but because the room party was held in his room. That was earlier on, however. As it wore on, and declined from its exuberant triumphs and people dived too deep in the darkwine sea or resurfaced into soberness, it fell to recitation time. Presford and I began reading through a couple of copies of, oh horror, the dreaded OMPA Combozine, passing various comments. Eventually Pete Presford, making a great creative effort and racking his skull, evolved a sort of freefall cutups version.

"One disgusting rainy day in January, Brian was in a hurry. Lisa was half an hour late and Brian thought he would have to marry her".

Presford intoned: "This may be because OMPA is using Jiffy bags this year."

Presford especially wanted me to mention that; suicidal tendencies coming out, I think. At the time I got him to read it through slowly two or three times so I could scribble it all down correctly. This, note, is believed to be where the rumours concerning Lisa Conesa, one of phandom's relative latecomers, originally sprang from.

And then what, Room Party 72 shattered like a Crass Goblin and we all trooped out. Recollections are hazy, but us flinging clock out of a top storey back window, just like one of those cliched shots of a torpedo being fired in a war movie, is an eidetic snapshot. In a largely useless letter of convention remembrances, Presford says, "there it was, next morning, jammed three floors up between two wings of the bloody hotel..." There was nowhere for it to fall and no-one for it to fall on, in case you're wondering.

People. Milling around. Aimlessly. Hotel lobby.

"My God," I said aloud, and instantly a pure white dust-jacketed copy of the Dream Master descended and fluttered onto my head. "There's John Brunner and his Red Velvet Suit.." Indeed, the Presence even somehow heard my words and turned and gave A Slight Smile. Gosh. Wow. Sense of Wonder...

(Traditional.) As I was thus idling, I casually noticed Dave engrossed at the notice board. By pulling out at strategic points the white plugin plastic letters from the message spelled out thereon, he had managed, possibly without cheating, to spell out the word "B A S T A R D". While this was crude, not to mention offensive, it had a certain simplistic effortless charm to it. The excess letters he'd banged into one corner of the board to get rid of them. Stepping closer I saw they suggested, with a certain amount of coercion, the words "PIKERSGILL LOVS KETTLE". Thus it began. Pholk began to gather, blotting out the remorselessly burning eye of the lobby lighting as they wheeled overhead, issuing raucous cries. A transcept image...

Accordingly I began to spell out the truism "YOU ARE NEVER ALONE WITH CRABS". Crustaceans also featured in one or two other slogans put up that night, and the cryptic subtleties of Presford's observant wit also would presumably be incomprehensible to relative latecomers to Notice Bored Phandumb, so I won't bother boring you with it all. Neither has Brian Robinson or Pete Presford, I see. Other catchy sayings spread around included the curious "THE END IS NIGH" (Douglass/Mauler) and "LYNCH BRUNNER SLOWLY" (Anon)(Actually, Robinson). This latter met with some disagreement, as many thought a Pro like John Brunner did not deserve such a fate as hanging, after all he's done to science fiction.

BiRo, recording the scene with his camera obscura; Bookends' Ted Ball who, like Bram, possesses it seems an eidetic memory store; and Lisa, coming down rather late to make an unexpected visitation, about to study the now fannish notice board when I hurriedly grabbed her and steered a geodesic course for the Notice Bored Phandumb-infested cocktail bar. Mike O'Meara, well known idiot and necrophiliac (I warned you, Mike) also taking photos.

And lastly, came the socks. As I was eventually wending my weary way to the bathroom, I came across on the first landing this 'ere cardboard box on one of the tressle tables they called the registration desk. Sticking out of this box was a sign, on which were hung two or three deadly poisonous socks, slowly coiling and uncoiling, More writhed slowly in the steaming bottom of the box, making unnerving hissing sounds and looking like Son of Quatermass. The sign read- "THE BRIAN ALDISS SOCK FUND", and underneath, "Notice By The Managements socks MOST be worn in the toilet" and underneath this, "lick them afterwards..."

Recoiling in horror, a-reeling and a-hopping, a-booging and a-bopping, I stumbled my way back to my bathroom haunt, where I discovered Room Service had emptied out my joss sticks with the used cigar butts, which pleased me no end. And in the jingle jangle morning I was gone. For we Gannetfolk were far away in our drunken music....

THE END OF THE CHESSMANCONREPORT.