A truly brilliant and scholarly account of The Battle of Tavern Hill.
How often have I cursed the fates that kept me from that memorable conflict.
Olga and I had been charged with bringing up the Heavy Artillery comprising the entire Battery of Siege Tomes. All was going well and we were looking forward to saving the day in most dramatic style as we trundled along the A688. Olga suggested that we refresh ourselves before covering the last few miles into the Valley of Chronicles where the fearsome firepower would be deployed.
Thus it was that we entered The Cloven Hoof boozer at Spennymoor which was run by a locally noted Satanist. What happened in the pub that evening would provide enough material to present a story of the most ghastly nature but the end result was that we were detained and diverted until it was too late to become decisively embroiled in the Battle.
So, regretfully, 500 remaindered copies of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 200 examples of the new rapid-fire version of Shakespeare's Collected Works plus one and a half tons of the Encyclopaedia Britannica went to waste. We had to flog them to the Landlord in order to pay for the drink we had consumed.
'Find your enemy and shoot him down - everything else is unimportant.'
