“More charcoal,” screamed Young Master Robert.

Pooley’s eyes suddenly alighted upon a half empty bag of cement which lay among a few unused red flettons in the corner of the patio. He recalled a time when, taking a few days’ work in order to appease a sadistic official at the Labour Exchange, he had installed a fireplace at a lady’s house on the Butts Estate. Knowing little about what happens when bricks and mortar grow hot, and having never heard of fireproof bricks and heat resistant cement, he had used these very same red flettons and a bag of similarly standard cement. The fire-engine bells still rang clearly in Jim’s memory.

There was another loud report from the base of the barbeque and Pooley reached out to make a grab at Young Master Robert’s shoulder. “Come on, come on,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the roaring of the fire. “Get inside.”

“Leave off, will you?” the young master shouted back. “Open those beans.”

Jim was a man who would do most things to protect his fellow man, but he was not one to scoff at self-preservation. “Run for your life,” bawled Jim, thrusting his way into the suddenly stampeding herd of cowboys who had by now similarly realized that all was not well with the barbeque, and that the all that was not well was of that kind which greatly endangers life and limb.

The mad rush burst in through the Swan’s rear door, carrying it from its hinges and depositing it on the cross-legged form of “Vindaloo Vic”, the manager of the Curry Garden, who had been busily employed in the heaping of sausages and steakettes into a stack of foil containers to be later resold in his establishment as Bombay Duck. He vanished beneath the rented soles of forty-eight trampling cowboy boots.

The merrymakers in the saloon bar were not long in discerning that something was going very wrong on the patio. As one, they rose to their feet and took flight. Neville found himself suddenly alone in the saloon bar. “Now what can this mean?” he asked himself. “The bar suddenly empty, drinks left untouched upon tables, cigarettes burning in ashtrays, had the Flying Swan become some form of land-locked Marie Celeste? Is it the steakettes, perhaps? Is it the Old Snakebelly, stampeding them off to the Thames like lemmings?” Neville’s ears became drawn to the sound which was issuing from the direction of the patio and which appeared to be growing second upon second. Something was building up to a deafening crescendo on the back patio and Neville had a pretty good idea what it was. It was Old Moloch itself, the ill-constructed brick barbeque, about to burst asunder.

Before Neville instinctively took the old “dive for cover” beneath the Swan’s counter he had the impression that a being from another world had entered the bar from the rear passage. This vision, although fleeting and seen only through the part-time barman’s good eye, appeared to be clad in a steaming skin-tight vinyl space-suit and wearing the remnants of a chefs hat.

The first explosion was not altogether a large one; it was by no means on the scale of Krakatoa’s outburst, and it is doubtful whether it even raised a squiggle upon the seismographs at Greenwich. It was the second one that was definitely the most memorable. Possibly a scientist schooled in such matters could have estimated the exact megatonnage of the thirty cases of Old Snakebelly. However, we must accept, in the untechnical jargon of John Omally who was returning at that moment from the allotment where he had been burying twenty-four bottles of the volatile liquid, that it was one “bloody big bang”.

The blast ripped through the Swan, overturning the piano, lifting the polished beer-pulls from the counter and propelling them through the front windows like so many silver-tipped torpedoes. The Swiss cheese roof of the gents’ toilet was raised from its worm-eaten mountings and liberally distributed over half-a-dozen back gardens. The crowd of cowboys who had taken cover behind the parked cars in the Ealing Road ducked their heads and covered their ears and faces as shards of smoke-stained glass rained down upon them.

Neville was comparatively unscathed. When he felt it safe he raised his noble head above the counter to peer through shaking fingers at the desolation that had been his pride and joy.

The Swan was wreathed in smoke, but what Neville could see of the basic structure appeared to be intact. As for the cowboy trapping and the pub furniture, little remained that could by any stretch of the imagination be called serviceable. The tables and chairs had joined the patrons in making a rapid move towards the front door, but unlike those lucky personnel their desperate bid for escape had been halted by the front wall, where they lay heaped like the barricades of revolutionary Paris. Sawdust filled the air like a woody snowstorm, and in the middle of the floor, lacking most of his clothes but still bearing upon his head the charred remnants of a chefs hat, lay Young Master Robert. Neville patted away the sawdust from his shoulders and found to his amazement one lone optic full of whisky. This indeed had become a night he would long remember.

The now emboldened cowboys had risen from their shelters and were beating upon the Swan’s door. Faces appeared at the glassless windows and inane cries of “Are you all right?” and “Is anybody there?” filled the smoky air.

Neville downed his scotch and climbed over the bar to inspect the fallen figure of the Young Master, who was showing some signs of life. The patrons finally broke into the bar and came to a crowded and silent standstill about the prone figure.

“He’s all right, ain’t he?” said Mandy. “I mean he’s still breathing, ain’t he?” Neville nodded. “Sandra’s phoned for an ambulance and the fire brigade.”

A great dark mushroom cloud hung over the Flying Swan. The first brigade, who arrived in record time, on hearing that it was a pub on fire, contented themselves with half-heartedly squirting an extinguisher over the blackened yard and salvaging what unbroken bottles of drink remained for immediate consumption. The ambulance driver asked sarcastically whether Neville wanted his home number in case of further calamities that evening.

When the appliances had finally departed, dramatically ringing their bells in the hope of waking any local residents who had slept through the blast, a grim and sorry silence descended upon the Flying Swan. The cowboys drifted away like western ghosts and the onlookers who had been awakened by the excitement switched out their lights and returned to their beds.

Neville, Pooley and John Omally were all who remained behind. Neville had brought down a couple of bottles of scotch from the private stock in his wardrobe. The three sat where they could in the ruined bar sipping at their drinks and contemplating the destruction.

“Heads will roll for this,” sighed Neville, “mine in particular.”

Omally nodded thoughtfully. “Still,” he said, “at least we’ll get that new bog roof now.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Neville.

“It was a good old do though, wasn’t it,” said, Jim. “I don’t suppose the brewery would be thinking of following it up at all, I mean maybe Hawaiian Night or a Merrie England festival or something?”

Neville grinned painfully. “Somehow I doubt it.”

“You must sue that Hairy Dave,” John suggested. “Him and his hirsute brother are a danger to life and limb.”

Neville opened the second bottle of scotch. “Come to think of it,” he said, “I don’t recall any specifications for materials coming with that plan from the brewery.”

“Aha!” said John. “Then all may not be lost.”

“The poor old Swan,” said Pooley, “what a tragedy.”

“We’ve had fine times here,” said Omally.

“They’ll ruin it you know,” said Neville, “the brewery, probably turn it into a discotheque or a steak house or something. There’s nothing they like better than getting their hands on a piece of England’s heritage and thoroughly crucifying it. It’ll be fizzy beer and chicken in a basket, you wait and see.”