We waited for an hour, until an appropriate time to set off for our
rendez-vous. The chosen spot for the fight was apparently a little way out of
Chester. As it turned out, it was actually a little way out of England. We
took the ring road round the city, passing such items of interest as the
railway station and a kind of run-down park. I thought from the state of the
bricks, the buildings had been pretty badly vandalised. But then Brian told me
it was in fact the Roman amphitheatre.
We passed out about as far as the retail parkzone. From there, via a fairly
tortuous route, we ended up just outside the built-up area, parked next to
what looked like an old railway bridge. Turns out, that was exactly what it
was. But the old railway was no longer there. Instead, it was now a cycle
path. We walked down onto the cycle path, and wandered further from the city
for about ten minutes.
“Of course, there was a Battle of Chester as well as the one at Rowton,”
Brian mentioned. Amazing, really. Even at a time like this, he had to keep
sharing his astoundingly vast but utterly irrelevant General Knowledge. “In
the Dark Ages, a king of Northumbria fought five kings of the Welsh tribes. I
think we can take heart from that, when we’re outnumbered five-to-one.” “Yes,
but Dave’s not Welsh,” pointed out Lydia. In the meantime, Danny
wandered a few paces behind, whistling the theme from High Noon. I was amazed
that he had volunteered to come. Maybe it was out of loyalty. Maybe it was out
of the knowledge that if Big Dave came looking for him, Lydia would probably
pass his address over anyway. And Lydia had decided that three soft
southerners would benefit from some Scouse steel. Danny had further unendeared
himself to her with his suggestion that she should use the standard
Liverpudlian tactics, and nick the wheels off Big Dave’s car. The old
railway ran off into the distance, across an expanse of flood plain that
smelt, on this bright summer day, of cabbages. What it was like in the depths
of a wet winter day was unimaginable. Even in good weather it was vile and
featureless. The fields were as flat as could be imagined, but the cycle track
was really impressive – stretching away.“Hey - this is part of the
National Cycle Path network. It goes all the way along the North Wales coast
if you follow it,” remarked Danny, who has now been established as our
cycling expert. He was reading some kind of signpost in the shape of a
stylised tree. Needless to say, Brian rushed over to discuss a matter of such
huge importance when you’re about to get your head kicked in. We walked
through the cabbage-smelling scenery for about ten minutes, past the bilingual
sign welcoming us to Wales. I was pleased to see it had been vandalised. And
then appearing from behind the buttress of an old bridge, we saw waiting for
us about thirty of the Order of the Prince of Bohemia. They formed up in four
ranks. I was relieved to see that at least none of them carried muskets or
broadswords. We formed up facing them, in one rank of four. This was not
looking good. On a word of command from Big Dave, they advanced towards us.
Danny wished us all good luck.
At this point, the member of the Order of the Prince of Bohemia noticed a
noise coming from behind them. Turning around, they seemed startled by what
they saw coming towards them. Mind you, so was I. At distance of half a mile,
down the long, straight course of the old railway, a number of cars were
coming towards us.
Big Dave and his merry men put off the fight to watch the approach of a very
strange convoy. Then we realised that a similar noise was coming from behind
us. Within a couple of minutes we were surrounded by Mini Metroes.
The front row of Metroes coming from the Welsh side just ploughed straight
into Prince Rupert’s finest. Three or four went down, as much from disbelief
that this was really happening as from the ten-mile-an-hour impact. There were
probably twenty cars on the Welsh side, and twenty coming from the English.
The front rows seemed to be mostly made up of MG Turboes. The ones at the
back, as if from embarrassment, were Rover 100s. I turned to Brian in
amazement.“You sorted this out?” I shouted over the din of A+ engines. He
grinned. Now the Metro drivers were jumping out and piling into Big Dave’s
mob. Danny, now thoroughly up for a fight, steamed in and punched the lights
out of a passing infantryman. I saw a corporal in the Welsh Archers picked
bodily from the ground by what looked like a couple of trainspotters, and
thrown over the fence into a cabbage field. Lydia knocked a trumpet-major into
the middle of next week. Meanwhile Brian and I just watched and laughed, the
great general and his aide-de-camp in total command of the
battlefield. In the Civil War, apparently everyone looked much the same
apart from the haircuts and they needed to carry standards around to tell who
was who. But today it was easy to tell one side from the other – the Metro
owners generally seemed to be wearing anoraks, while of course Big Dave’s
mob were in pantaloons and ruffles. Also some of Big Dave’s boys were
sporting black eyes before the fight even started. I guess they were the ones
Garth and his mates had sorted out the previous night. I tell you, when you’re
into Civil War re-enactment, it never rains…It’s often said that in the
big set-piece battles of the Civil War, it was morale rather than tactics that
made all the difference. And the morale on Big Dave’s side was totally shot.
Emulating Charles I himself, some of them ran round the sea of Metroes and ran
for freedom into the wilds of Wales. Seeing the way things were going,
Big Dave started to run for it. He made the mistake of running our way. I
stuck out a leg and, yet again, Big Dave fell down. He was getting a lot of
practice at this. Big Dave was lying there on his back, struggling to get his
breath back. Brian jumped onto his chest with both knees, and grabbed him by
the throat.
“Now listen to me. If I hear any more from you, ever, I’ll make sure every
Metro owner in the country is on your case. Do you hear me? This is just a
hint of what we can do – just a few of our northwestern chapter. Don’t
underestimate the menace of the Metro Owners’ Club. We’ve got a lot of
bank managers. We won’t break your arms, we’ll just arrange for someone to
ruin your credit history” Big Dave was a beaten man. He’d had a hell
of a bad day. He just nodded meekly. Brian stood up, and called off the
troops. The Civil War people staggered meekly from the field. The Metro owners
gathered around Brian. A few had superficial injuries, but they were mostly
just jubilant. He thanked them all for their help, and they dispersed back
down the cycle path whence they came. We started our walk back to
England. “I take it when you went for a walk round the hotel, you were
summoning up the reinforcements. Brian, you’re a genius,” I said. “Not
just a masterpiece of planning, but a perfect pincer movement. Oliver Cromwell
couldn’t have done it better himself, even if he’d had the North-West
Metroes regiment under his command.” Danny was equally as impressed.
And Lydia was into hero-worship mode by this stage. Not only that, but she had
thoroughly enjoyed the fight, and was now wanting to get back to Chester to
celebrate.
To
next chapter