Chapter Twenty One
An Evening at The Crow

After another couple of hours, Sara Mann had gone to her mother’s, and the three had returned to the pub late, to find the others had already left. Theodore had written a message and left it for them with the barman. Fortunately, Brian had scribbled a note on the back saying they’d moved on to The Dunland Crow to obtain rooms for the night. When Dumbledalf and Hagrigorn arrived, they found them variously asleep, talking or playing bar billiards. They settled down with a drink.

“What was all that about?”, asked Brian.
“Oh, nothing important. The main thing is that Sara Mann is free of that flirtation with Vol-au-vent. They all agreed, but a little later, Dumbledalf leaned over to Theodore and whispered, “She has gone down with a bout of worms and, though she won’t say why, apparently has a particular dislike for you, Theodore!”
With an innocent and hurt expression, Theodore looked him straight in the eye and said, “The aloof narwhal of fortune sails past the wanton clam of promise unseen”, whilst surreptitiously poking an ‘Emperor’ size Viagra tablet inside Dumbledalf’s samosa.
“She doesn’t want to see me for a while, and frankly, I don’t like it”, Dumbledalf continued. “Still”, he said, his mouth full, “if I happen to meet her and her worms on the road one day, I will give her another chance, but I can’t be bothered to pursue her now”. He finished his snack and quaffed his ale. “No, I think I’ll head off to Pigwort Minster at once. I must warn the Senate Committee”.
“Stay for another, Merlin”, said Brian, heading for the bar.
“Oh, all right”, said Dumbledalf. With that, he promptly fell asleep in his seat, slumped over the table. After a few minutes, a viscous string of saliva, extending progressively further from his mouth, reached a newspaper on the table and began to spread out laterally, absorbed by a photograph of Barack Obama.
‘Bollocks’, thought Brian, as he returned with the drinks, ‘That is quite revolting! Today’s Bourgeois too! I was hoping to read the wonderfully insightful JB column’. He roughly took a swill of his beer, and some of it went down his neck.

The next day, the remainder of the fellowship decided to head off to the conference at Pignut Minster. Dumbledalf, who had not recovered from the embarrassment of waking up at the end of the evening with all eyes on an unrelenting, obvious and unexplained erection, which had refused to desist even when he woke up again in his room hours later, had already left. The friends shuffled off slowly and untidily, but Hagrigorn, who had met some old chums of his, was strangely restless and, after a while, saying that he knew a short cut through the cemetery, got up and left with Tick and Thrakkarzog.

In this way, a motley collection of people comprised the remaining fellowship, including Theodore, Mary, Poppins, Brian and Enid. They stopped for a not so hurried lunch in a strange little pub called The Druid, where they had a very nice stew with dumplings and were entertained by a local musical group ‘Cranberry Stan and the Puking Man’, who were practicing for a performance later that day. Enid, who had been quiet and looking rather thoughtful, gazed at a large reproduction of Petrov-Vodkin’s Shore on the wall. She turned to Brian Sewell.
“I’ve been wondering, Brian. Just what is it all about? You know, life, existence, humanity, decency, indecency, and well, art?”, and they gazed together at the painting. Sewell belched loudly and placed his beer carefully at the exact middle of a beer mat. After a few seconds, he spoke.
“Well, in those far off days of suppression of the human spirit and indeed, oppression of the body, you know, it was not always possible to obtain female models for studies of the human form. Etiquette, mores and religious sensitivities prevented it, so they used males”.
“Is that so?”, replied Enid, surprised. She looked again at the painting.
“Yup!”, continued Brian, picking up his beer glass, “Stuck the tits on afterwards”. He let out another long belch, “That’s why it don’t do nuffink for yer. ‘Scuse me a sec. I’m off for a slash”. Enid looked at the painted bresasts, thoughtfully. “You know, Brian ...”, she began, but Brian was gone.