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stopped and I turned. And there was John Omally. My good friend John. My bestest friend. A friend in need, indeed.
    ‘John,’ I said. And I took a deep breath.
    ‘You have a fag,’ said John Omally. ‘Give us a puff of that fag.’
    ‘Have it, my friend,’ I said. And I would have plucked it from my mouth’s corner, where it was firmly lodged, despite all run and talk, had Omally not beaten me to it.
    ‘A Wild Woodbine,’ he declared. And he took a great toke upon it. And then he took to violent coughing, which cheered me not a little.
    ‘Why were you running away?’ he asked, once he had been able to draw a decent breath and wipe the tears from his eyes.
    ‘The Gestapo are after me,’ I told him.
    ‘Your Aunt Edna has at last informed upon you?’
    I looked hard at Omally. ‘You too,’ I said, in scarce but a whisper. ‘Me too what?’ himself replied.
    ‘This Nazi thing,’ I said. ‘The Nazis, here in Brentford.’
    ‘What about them?’ Omally asked.
    ‘Well, they should not be here, should they?’
    ‘Well, of course they shouldn’t. Which is why you and me will be joining the Resistance. As soon as we’re old enough.’
    ‘The Resistance?’ I said. ‘Oh yes,’ I also said.
    ‘They have to be beaten,’ said Omally. ‘Otherwise you and I are going to have to take to the Work. And I for one of us am not keen at all on that scenario.’
    ‘No,’ said I. ‘Nor me. But I must speak to you of these things and I am all confused. Let us go somewhere and talk.’
    ‘The Wife’s Legs Café?’
    ‘Not there.’
    ‘Then down to Cider Island.’
     
    Cider Island is a tiny parcel of land that lies for the most part hidden behind tall walls of corrugated iron, down beside the weir. Which is down beside the Thames, which is down at the bottom of Horseferry Lane.
    Where the bushes in the Memorial Park had been our ‘camp’ when we were young, Cider Island had been our ‘hideout’.
    It had not been called Cider Island then, but only later when the local homeless drunkards, having been ejected from their former location, Sherry Plateau, moved in.
    Cider Island slept in the sunlight, as might a fat tomcat in a window box, or a well-loved wife on a Saturday morn. Comfortably. Cosily. Contentedly too. As well they all might.
    John swung aside the sheet of corrugated iron that masked the secret entrance and we two slipped onto Cider Island.
    The drunkards there all snoozed as they might and I followed John down to a ruined barge that lay half-in and half-out of the ancient dock. We boarded this and slipped inside and settled down in the gloom.
    This crumbling hulk did not smell too much of nostalgia, more of dog droppings and drunken man’s wee-wee. It was not an agreeable or healthsome combination, but I was in no mood to be picky.
    ‘I just do not understand it,’ I told John. ‘How it happened. How no one but me seems to know that it is all wrong.’
    ‘We all know it’s wrong,’ said John. ‘All Brentonians. All right-thinking Britishers. As to how it happened, well, that’s just history, isn’t it? We did that at school.’
    ‘We certainly did not,’ I said.
    ‘I do believe that you are drunk,’ said John. ‘Do you have a small bottle about yourself that you are keeping from me?’
    ‘I have no bottle, John. Nor do I have a recollection of any history at school that involved the Germans invading England.’ And then I sighed. Deeply. ‘So Kew is German-occupied too?’ I said.
    ‘All these sceptred isles, except for Scotland. They fought off the Romans and the Germans too. Bravo those kilted lads, say I.’
    ‘And me also. But tell me how it happened, John. Tell me what you say we were taught at school. I cannot remember any of it. I am beginning to think that there might be something wrong with my brain box.’
    ‘More so than usual, eh?’ Omally chuckled. ‘Give us another fag.’
    And I had one too. And we sat and we drew upon them and we coughed in unison and Omally