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head in a fierce and bristly fashion. 'She'll change things, Derek. She'll report back to head office that we're not doing things the way that things should be done. She'll make us use that stuff.'
    Mr Shields made fierce gestures towards several large boxes that stood in the corner of the office. These boxes bore the distinctive logo of the Mute Corp computer company. These boxes had a rather dog-eared quality to them; they had all sorts of coffee-cup rings and cigarette burns on them. They were clearly boxes that had stood unopened in the editor's office for a very very long time.
    'I think she'll probably make us change that stuff,' said Derek. 'It's five years out of date now and computer technology speeds right along.'
    'I should have thrown it all out,' declared Mr Shields. 'Car-booted the lot of it! Perhaps I could drop one on her if she comes in this direction. We could say it was an accident. You could back me up.'
    'Not me,' said Derek and crossing to the window he peered out. 'She's a very attractive young woman,' he said.
    'They're the worst kind,' said Mr Shields, sinking into his chair. 'Attractive women with brains. Whatever was God thinking of when he came up with that idea? Women should be obscene and not heard, that's my view on the matter.'
    'So you constantly let it be known.'
    'Is she still there?' asked Mr Shields.
    'No, she's moving off.'
    'Thank the Lord Most High for that. So what's on the calendar for today?'
    'Not much,' Derek shrugged. 'It's another bank holiday, as well you know. Another bank holiday that I could have had off.'
    'The news never sleeps,' said Mr Shields. 'A story could break any moment.'
    'A story hasn't broken here for nearly a quarter of a century. Not since Brentford got to officially celebrate the millennium two years before the rest of the world. And that was before I was born.'
    'Today might be the day then. Something really exciting might happen.'
    'Yeah, right,' said Derek.
    'Ah but it might,' said Mr Shields. 'Something unexpected. Something really big.'
    Knock, knock, knock came a knocking at the door and then it swung right open.
    Framed in the portal stood Kelly Anna Sirjan. 'Good day Mr Shields,' she said.
     
    And it was a good day. Such a very good day. Such a very good and joyous and sunny kind of day. Good day.
    Five tourists on the top deck smiled and chitchatted, the tour guide went through his spiel.
    'If thou lookest to the right,' came the voice of Big Bob through the proper public address system. 'Thou wilt see the Waterman's Arts Centre and beyond that in the middle of the River Thames, Griffin Island. Haunt, so legend has it, of the Brentford Griffin. Many claim to have seen the beast. Mostly after the pubs close, of course.'
    Periwig Tombs changed down a gear, but his brain was now in overdrive.
Your week in Suburbia World Plc
would not be complete without a boat trip to Brentford's own
Fantasy Island,
went the thoughts of Periwig Tombs, translating themselves into the World Wide Web page that he was planning to set up to advertise his money-spinning venture.
See the creature of myth
(you could knock those up out of polisynthafibreglass)
that once
inhabited this enchanted realm in the dream world days of
the magic distant past. (Brentford's take
on Jurassic Park.
That was done and dusted!)
    Oho!
went the thoughts of Periwig Tombs. And then
Aha!
And oh yes! You really could add some wonderful attractions to this historical theme park. It didn't have to be all conservation and leaving things as they were. That had been the way Big Bob saw it. But he, Periwig Tombs OBE, could do it better than that. Much better. There was all that holographic technology about today. The stuff they used in all those Disney Worlds that dotted the continents. You
could
employ that. It might be getting away from the original spirit of the thing, but used in the right way…
    The wheels on the bus went round and round and Periwig Tombs smiled on.
     
    Kelly Anna Sirjan wasn't