"It's said that's why he let Watergate leak out. He was missing it so much as President, he had to get away to it more often."
"I heard that Margaret Thatcher wasn't crying as she left No.10 after Major took over because she was pissed off with the Tories, but because Dennis chipped her Barley Pan."
"Her what? Barley Pan. What the bloody hell's a Barley Pan?"
Suddenly it went as quiet as death. You could have heard a No.10 run over a hedgehog. They were all looking at the black man. Mouths were agape.
"Are you taking the piss, man?" It was a Frank Bruno look-a-like. Mind you, the black man thought, with everyone who is anyone her in London, it could be the man himself. Anyway, he was too big to argue with.
"Look, I've been locked away in my room for the past few days, oblivious to the outside world. Before that, I just arrived from Nigeria. Things are a little behind the times there, you know."
"Not that far behind. If you asked an Eskimo what a Barley Pan was he..."
"He what?"
"Well...nobody actually knows what one looks like."
"Somebody must bloody well know. If Presidents are coming to bid for one, surely to christ they know what they are bidding for?"
By this time the discussion, if it could be called that, was beginning to get heated. The black man decided to leave before it turned ugly. He looked again at Frank. He tried to imagine him in a pair of tights, with a wand in one hand and the other up a fairy.
The group had grown to thirty as the man walked away. He entered the YMCA and just beat a rather well dressed man who had been paying a taxi, to the last room.
"Please, I'll give you anything you want, but I must have a room. How about my wife for the evening?"
The black man flopped onto his bed in the small room of the top floor of the seven storey building. "The last room in London," the man at the reception desk had said, reluctantly handing over the key. "You know, I could have sold that for ten times its worth." The black man had heard him shout to the other man, who was walking out with his head in his hands, that he would be happy to take his wife off his hands for the night.
"Thye world's going bloody mad." He got out a minature bottle of rum and turned on the tv. Each of the four stations had interrupted normal services to concentrate on the auction at Christie's. "I've had enough of this, he said turning off the set. His stomach was rumbling so he decided to make his way to a restaurant for a meal.
It turned out that every eating place in the capital was full. He headed for Macdonalds on Oxford Street. The crowds were hyped up, like one of those movies you see of VE Day. Everyone was talking at once. And it was obvious what they were talking about.
He looked at the board, after waiting for nearly fifteen minutes to get to the front of the queue. "What is a Barley Pan special?" he asked the young waitress.
"Nobody knows. It's a surprise, just like the real thing."
"Then give me a Big Mac."
"I'd keep a good eye on that briefcase, mister. Don't see too many of them in here."
Continued over
Definition:
Auction (Noun)
A usually public sale of goods or property, where people make higher and higher bids (offers of money) for each item, until the item is sold to the person who will pay the most
Cambridge Online Dictionary 2005
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