As part of my selfless espionage, I am forced into attending many social outings with the heinous Jonny B.
One such ritual humiliation is the weekly snooker match. As it has been since the dawn of time, we are left cursing our general lack of skill and manliness, as we succumb to a 25-0 beating. Fast forward several hours, (and several pints), and we are travelling at breakneck speed along a small country road in the middle of nowhere. Jonny is driving. He has been drinking again. He's always drinking these days. I beseech him to slow down, but he just stares into the gloom ahead and ignores my cries.
We round a tight corner at high speed, the car tilts, leaves the ground for several minutes, and executes a mid-air triple-salko. The next thing I know I am flying through the air, like a beautiful angel, down from Heaven for the weekend, before thumping face-down into the snow, head ringing and balls aching. The Firm trains you to be calm in these situations, but I am shaking with fury and fear as I struggle to my feet.
The car is laying upside-down in a ditch. It looks like it has been through one of those compactors you get at the breakers. You know, I think they had one in Superman. Or like Luke Skywalker would have looked like if he had actually got crushed in that room that he was stuck in with Princess Leia. I am babbling incoherently, and struggling to think of a half-decent metaphor, but hopefully you get the picture.
I fall to my knees and look inside. John Twonill is out cold and bleeding from a nasty gash to his temple. Len the Fish is conscious, but has a thousand-yard stare in his eyes. I think he might be dead, before he coughs bright red blood all over the back seat. The Chipper Barman is upside down with his head in Len's lap. (I don't know whether he was like that before the crash, I was in the front.) Jonny B is strangely unharmed, and busy crawling out of the driver's door.
"Hit some black ice", he explains. The man's audacity knows no bounds.
We set about pulling the others from the wreckage. John appears to have broken some ribs, and Len has to forcibly extricate a rogue snooker cue which appears to have lodged itself in his arse, but otherwise we are remarkably unharmed.
We assess our situation. The country road we had been travelling down is deathly quiet. The snow is falling heavily now. I can barely see ten yards in front of me.
"We must find some shelter", says Len the Fish, to which there is general assent. We do not know which way to proceed. Jonny B says that he did some orienteering when he was in the third year, and says that you can find north by sticking your tongue out and seeing how many flakes you can catch standing in different directions.
It sounds like bollocks to me, but I’m still reeling from the crunching ball-ache, so I nod and tell him to lead the way.
Hours later we are still making away across snow-covered fields. Visibility has dropped to nothing. John has turned slightly blue and can only walk for short periods before he has to be given a piggyback by Len, who has kept the snooker cue, ostensibly to ward off any bears, wolves, etc. I think he might just be a bit fond of it.
The Chipper Barman wails "I don't want to die out here" from time to time. Chipper no more, the poor man.
We make camp under some old bits of wood that have been put together in a seemingly haphazard fashion. It is not much of a shelter, but it will do until the snow subsides. We swallow our pride and cling to each other for warmth.
I awake during the night to find Jonny B gnawing on my buttocks. Whether this is a sign of affection or hunger I am not quite sure, and I am too tired to make a big issue of it. I tell him to bugger off and roll over, and try and get some sleep.
Morning comes, finally, and we wake to find the world covered in snow. We survey our surroundings, and find that we are in the Chipper Barman's garden. We have been sleeping in the shed we helped move, back in September 2005, if memory serves.
Lucky.
