‘t**t PAKIS!’ cried out a brute somewhere behind the police line. He was greeted by a round of applause. The prelude to the afternoon’s entertainment, Capstick mused, or maybe that was the entertainment; the Saturday matinee cut short to make way for a bloody great punch up.
wasThe two veterans on the stage eventually stood up and saluted to the applauding crowd, the war medals attached to their chests shining brightly not in the sunlight (there wasn’t any) but in the overhead lighting required to illuminate the square at this bleak time of the year. One of the veterans – a short man with a limp – picked up the loudhailer uncertainly and spat out a soft monotone, the sound of which blew a hole in the meticulously prepared content of his meticulously rehearsed speech:
‘Today we Englishmen
