About this story
Lunch with Barker and Lambert is interrupted by Juan del Fuego, an ousted president who pins yellow paper and his own blood to a green coat and argues that a king chosen by alphabetical rotation is no less absurd than his lost republic. A joke about standing on your head on a hill draws two officials up the slope, and a sealed announcement: the rotation has just made you King of England.
How it opens
Eighty years of confident prophecy had left the streets almost offensively familiar.
Fog held the terraces in grey while James Barker and Wilfrid Lambert walked toward lunch.
James BarkerAuberon, one day idleness will discover a practical use for you.
Wilfrid LambertDo not encourage him to make practicality ridiculous as well.
Choose
Any man dressed against the weather deserves an introduction.
Sir, my friends lack colour and hope you can spare some.