“Flying Squadron?”

“Left three hours ago.”

“Pedallers?”

“Left three days ago.”

“Speleologist Squadron?”

“Left three months ago.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure we’ll be seeing them again.”

“They’ll be all right. As soon as Harry Pine runs out of cigars they’ll be straight back up to the surface.”

“Maybe. Anyway, what other options are there?”

I passed around the Woodbines, and took a deep draught of Butler’s. Though the rail strike, effective as of midnight that night, had not been entirely unexpected, we had held onto our hope that a deal could be reached between the NUR and the government, or at least that negotiations would drag on until after five o’clock on Saturday. In doing so, we’d knocked back a number of alternative travel options, including a pleasant sojourn by canal barge and a fiendishly-complicated road route in which two dozen Wolves supporters tagged onto multiple house removals throughout Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and the West Riding. Now we stared grimly down the barrel of a Wolves-less weekend. The beer tasted flat and cigarettes scratched the throat. Around us the pub was in happy Friday spirits, but nothing short of a miracle would cheer us up.

‘Lemons of the world, unite!’

‘Oh, Christ,’ said Jack suddenly, as I stared morosely into my pint, ‘Keep yer bloody head down.’

‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

‘Lemons of the world, unite!’ came a cackling voice from behind me, ‘‘Tis the dawn of fruit, natural fertilizer and other products available long before the fat fingers of capitalism tickled this town! Awaken! Awaken from your fetischist slumber! The windows to the world have been cleansed!’

‘Oi’ve towelled yow lot before!’ shouted Ted Adey from behind the bar, as diluted fruit juice rained down, ‘Not in moi house!’

The Dunstall Dada were unwelcome in most pubs of the town, but I was amazed to see them set foot in the Colonel Vernon. Adey ran a very tight ship, loathed radical politics and had no interest at all in art beyond the sentimentally representational.

Mathieu Noir (alias Mattie Black of Horseley Fields), Dic-Dat Django (alias Pete Strong of Staveley Road) and Dave Begley (alias Klaus Weiss, of Werd, Zürich) stood at the door of the public bar, in white pancake, with thickly-painted beetle-brows and upcurled moustaches, holding the bellows they’d used to squirt their ‘anti-capitalist acid’ on the assembled clientele. There were some mumbled threats and exhortations to be gone, but the pub was in good spirits and happy for Ted to deal with things.

‘Tais-toi, capitalist ghoul!’ shouted Mathieu Noir, ‘Have you not heard, ze wevolushern has begurn!’

‘Out yer goo!’ said Ted Adey, with a severe nod of the head.

‘Burt, is raining?’ said Mathieu, less aggressively now, ‘And…, we are sirsty?’

‘Out, I said!’

‘Sree pants of peter, s’il vous plait.’

I decided to intervene. ‘Hold on, Ted,’ I said, standing up from the table from which Jack was now looking up at me with some irritation, even mild panic, ‘Lerrum have a pint. Just,’ I looked at the Dunstall Dada sternly, ‘No squirting, no proselytizing, and no… whatever it is you do.’

‘Action poetry!’ answered Mathieu, as if I’d asked a question.

‘Just sit down and have a drink,’ I said.

‘This one’s on you, Gonby,’ warned Ted, ‘any commie talk or scripted interactions with the customers and they – and you – are out.’

‘They’ll be good, Ted,’ I promised, looking uneasily at Dic-Dat Django, who waggled one of his painted eyebrows suggestively.

‘You have absinse?’ asked Mathieu, a question which was met by a silence that quickly changed his mind. ‘Sree pants of peter, s’il vous plait.’

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Jack, while Ted poured the avant-garde collective their drinks.

‘You’ll see,’ I said.

Within a couple of minutes, the Dada was sat at our table, and Mathieu Noir was handing out the Galloises. ‘Sanks so merch, Gonby,’ he said, ‘I owe you one.’

‘How’s the car?’

‘What car?’

‘The, whachyacallit. The Dada Charabanc?’

‘Ze Dadabanc? Très bien! We’re taking it out tomorrow.’

‘I thought we were calling it the Random Charabanc…’ said Dic-Dat.

‘Where you going?’ I asked.

‘Gonby, you know I can’t tell you that. It’s a random charabanc. It never has a set destinashun.’

‘So it is the Random Charabanc?’ said Dic-Dat.

‘It’s a random charabanc. It’s not Zee Random Charabanc. I don’t sink. Maybe.’

‘How’s the pint?’

‘Not bad,’ said Mathieu cautiously.

‘It’s just that we could do with a lift tomorrow. And there are no trains, you know, because of the…’

‘Ze wevolushern, yes. Up ze workers!’

‘Oi’ve warned yow!’ came the cry from behind the bar.

‘Sorry, Ted,’ I said, then turning to Mathieu, ‘Maybe we could make it sort of semi-random.’

‘Semi-random?’

‘Get to Leeds before three o’clock using… random roads.’

‘Zis is not possible. Wandon means wandom.’

‘We’ll chip in for petrol.’

Mathieu considered. ‘Never. We cannot sell out ze wevolooshun like zat.’

‘How about this: we go to Derby – big railway city, Derby. You do some action poetry in support of the strike…’

‘Revolooshurn.’

‘Revolution, whatever. Then we get to Leeds for three o’clock.’

‘Zis is Bourgeois. Zis is tertally Bourgeois.’

‘Via Crewe?’

‘Bourgeois.’

‘Via Manchester?’

‘Bourgeois.’

‘Dewsbury?’

‘Zat’s worse! Petit Bourgeois!’

‘Rochdale?’

‘Bourgeois.’

The conversation continued in this way for another forty minutes or so. Jack got a round in, I shared the Woodbines; I got a round in, Jack shared the Senior Service. Dic-Dat Django got a round in; Dave Begley shared the Davidoffs. Et cetera. Et cetera.

‘Stoke.’

‘Bourgeois.’

‘Nantwich.’

‘Bourgeois.’

‘Leeds,’ said Jack Dudley.

‘Leeds via Leeds?’ I asked with a roll of the eyes. There followed a strange silence.

‘Magnifique!’ cried Mathieu, with enthusiastic nodding from the hitherto-inexpressive Dave Begley.

And so it was that the Dunstall Hill Dada picked us up outside the Stafford Road railway works early the next morning in their Random Charabanc / Dadabanc, a Leyland Torpedo daubed with one of Dic-Dat’s sound poems. Their number had grown considerably since I’d last seen the vehicle, when it still sported bold, vaguely-cubist zig-zags later plagiarized by the Royal Navy. Today their outfits were less homogenous; among a (male) nun, a septuagenarian lady in communion dress, Boer-War soldiers and an Elizabethan peasant, Mathieu Noir was dressed in newspaper collage, while Dave Begley had shaved his head and wore antlers soaked in animal urine. Dic-Dat Django was driving, kitted out in immaculate white chauffer’s uniform.

‘Can we move this trunk?’ I asked as we climbed in through the rearmost doors.

‘Imposseeble,’ said Mathieu Noir.

‘What’s in it?’ asked Jack Dudley, reaching for the catch.

‘Stop! When ze trunk opens, ze shourney ends!’

With all pretence at randomness abandoned we made quick time, and were ordering breakfast at Harry’s Cafe, Halifax by twelve o’clock. On the street outside, some of the Dadaists staged a rather half-hearted tableau, with the nun spanking the soldiers with a rolled-up typescript of Dic-Dat’s sound poetry. On the next table, a prosperous-looking group of businessmen were discussing books, but – as far as I could gather – not the artistic kind. I accidentally caught the eye of a pudgy man with receding hairline.

‘That lot with you?’ he asked, nodding towards the window, through which one could now see the soldiers marching behind the nun in tight circles, reading different pages of the typescript simultaneously to create a cacophonous sound collage that at once suggested the chaos of war and capitalism while simultaneously eschewing traditional notions of representation and classical reason.

‘That lot with you?’ he asked, nodding towards the window, through which one could now see the soldiers marching behind the nun in tight circles, reading different pages of the typescript simultaneously to create a cacophonous sound collage that at once suggested the chaos of war and capitalism while simultaneously eschewing traditional notions of representation and classical reason.

‘Sort of.’ I replied, ‘We’re going to the football at Leeds.’

‘Not dressed like that you’re not. Herbert Chapman, Leeds City.’

I shook the outstetched hand and then straightened my tie.

‘Not you lot. I’m on about the decadents,’ he eyed Dave Begley’ antlers and gave a disdainful sniff.

‘They’re not really interested in football,’ I said.

‘Bourgeois,’ agreed Mathieu Noir haughtily, ‘and depuis-garde, aussi!’

‘Interesting vehicle you’ve got out there.’

‘Ze Dadabanc? ‘Tis mooer zan a veer-cull. ‘Tis a scalpel viz vich to curt ze societee.’

‘A scalpel with wheels,’ agreed Dave Begley.

‘You could fit a whole football team in there,’ said Chapman, looking around at his fellow directors.

‘You could,’ agreed Noir, ‘Or you could fit a critique of western society and ze future of artistic expression in a world in which bourgeois values and ze narrative of nation have collapsed.’

‘Probably not both at the same time, though,’ said Jack Dudley.

‘Agreed,’ said Mathieu Noir.

‘Is it for sale?’ asked Chapman.

At this, Noir and Begley rose from the table, spat on Chapman’s shoes and walked out of the greasy spoon. Within seconds the engine had started and the charabanc was spluttering onto the road without us.

‘There was no need for that,’ said Chapman, to which we all agreed.

‘I don’t suppose you know if there’s a bus to Leeds?’ asked Jack, as the café owner brought us our full Englishes.

‘Don’t you worry, lads. You can squeeze into our Daimler. Just don’t start spanking anyone with rubbish poetry.’

□ □ □ □ □

After leaving Harry’s Cafe we headed for a couple of pints at the Ring O’Bells before squeezing into the Daimler and making our way to Elland Road. The tongues of Messrs. Chapman, Connor and Clarke had been loosened by strong drink, and they filled us in on the details of Leeds City’s considerable difficulties.

‘I should never have promoted him,’ said Chapman of a man called Cripps (it appeared that the principle attribute for gaining a position of power at the club was to have a surname that began with ‘C’).

‘I told you that at the time,’ muttered Connor darkly from behind the wheel.

‘Now this Copeland chappie,’ continued Chapman over his shoulder, ‘a thoroughly average footballer, appears to have become a rather more formidable blackmailer.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Alderman William Clarke, re-lighting a rather well-chewed cigar, ‘This will all blow over.’

‘Will it ‘eck as like,’ snapped Connor, ‘Were you not listening when they gave us till October the sixth?’

‘But we are Leeds.’

‘We are Leeds, we are Leeds, we are Leeds; that’s all we ever hear from you. These fellows aren’t just here to say “how do?” You need to understand that.’

‘You need to do something about those papers, Clarke,’ said Chapman coldly, ‘You’re the lawyer. Find a way.’

It all sounded rather dirty. I tried to change the mood with talk of the Harvest Festival we had put together for the oldsters of Whitmore Reans, but this only led Connor to bleat about some payment to a local infirmary and all sense of good cheer was gone by the time we arrived in Leeds.

As we pulled up on Park Lane (Alderman Clarke needed to store some papers at his office) we became aware of a great kerfuffle outside the Town Hall, with banging and shouting, some mechanical creaking, and cacophonic sound poetry. The trunk which we’d spied in the back of the Random Charabanc / Dadabanc was on the pavement, opened to reveal an assortment of heavy spanners, wrenches and sockets. Next to it, the nun was handing out spark plugs to passers-by. I walked over to investigate.

‘What is going on?’ I asked, as Mathieu Noir carefully placed some bricks under the jacked-up front-right axle.

‘When ze trunk is opened, ze shourney ends,’ he said, lowering the car down onto the bricks.

‘Who opened it?’

‘Dada!’

As a crowd fought over the newly-liberated front wheel, I headed back to the Daimler and lit a cigarette. ‘We’re going to have trouble getting back,’ I said to Jack, passing him a Woodbine.

‘You still sinking of buying ze Dadabanc, Chapman?’ shouted Mathieu Noir from across the street, with a maniacal laugh.

□ □ □ □ □

The game ended 1-1, and was just about absorbing enough for us to put our transport difficulties to one side. At half time, I ran into Harold ‘Chimdy’ Potts who informed me with regret that there was no room in any of the Flying Squadron’s dirigibles; as for the Honourable and Worthy Pedallers, they would take us, but it would mean getting seaties all the way back to the Molineux Hotel, and I didn’t feel that was fair on us or the riders. Though we scoured the pubs after the full-time whistle, the men involved in the complicated house removal chain were nowhere to be seen, and neither was the canal expedition.

And so, with some trepidation, we decided to stay on in the West Riding rather than try and walk home. City were due to play at Molineux the following week, and we hoped that, if the strike hadn’t ended by then, we might be able to find a route back to Whitmore Reans with some of their away following. It was a decision that would prove to be one of the most fateful of our lives, and give us a week of political intrigue, financial skulduggery and unconventional sound poetry that neither of us would ever forget.