The lights were low, the single illuminating bulb dangling precariously over the kitchen table, various implements sketching out a battle plan worthy of the most avid Dungeons and Dragons role-player, the four faces of the men who hovered around it thrown into darkly mysterious relief as they studied the surface with avid attention.
"Mike…" Rick enquired after a goodly few minutes, his eyes lifting to search the expressions of the others. "What exactly does all this mean?" He smiled uncertainly, the way an ape will when threatened.
"I just wanted to say -" The hippy began. Of course, since he had been thinking deeply and had something of relative sentimental importance to tell the guys he was thoroughly talked over.
"It means that if you ask another stupid question I'm going to stuff this tea cosy up your bottom!"
"Guys…"
"It's perfectly simple, Rick…"
"Guys…"
"Vyvyan! Don't you ruddy well dare! My parents left me that spoon in their will. Argh!"
"Quiet, Neil's got something to tell us. What is it, Neil?"
Neil looked around at the others uncertainly, not used to having their full attention. He cleared his throat. "Did anyone else have like, a really weird dream last night?" He asked preliminarily. Anything else he might have said was suddenly cut off as Rick, flushed with the memory of the dream of his bizarre and lonely death, snatched up the tea cosy and pulled it over Neil's face.
The face that forced the abortion issue sighed and looked profoundly off camera, his eyes clouded. "Yeah, I had one." Mike said quietly. The time had come to build bridges, not the traditional way with bricks and mortar, but with words (it was to be an abstract bridge). "It made me realise something," he continued, looking to each of the other men's faces as they listened closely, "It made me realise that we can't grow old alone. We could have broken away from each other, gone on to do great things, but without each other we're nothing, we're not a whole. We need our friendship more than money, more than fame, more than success."
An awed silence descended… then realised it had gotten the co-ordinates wrong and rapidly ascended with a terrified squawk as a certain punk was violently and copiously sick and Rick whined "Eurgh, Mike's gone funny" in a terrified tone whilst he pulled anxiously at a strand of hair. Neil, who had heard nothing due to the tea cosy over his head, walked into the table and fell over it, arms flailing wildly and knocking all the carefully laid out battle pieces to the floor.
Mike simply sighed.
Within a few hours, the considerably-older-than-they-once-were ones had tried to stick up a bank using only water pistols, somehow managed to procure a large amount of stolen money anyway, had smashed Vyvyan's car and SPG's coffin (hamsters don't live forever, not even ones that have forehead studs and have survived a shark-infested flood and being dropped into saucepans full of lentils and…) that had been nailed to the fender for good luck against a tree whilst trying to make a getaway, and so had hijacked a bus instead, all the while with Neil complaining of a strong sense of déjà vu.
They were currently zooming along in the bus at above speed limit speed, singing 'We're All Going on a Summer Holiday' and other hits remembered from their glory days. A general sense of well-being had pervaded amongst them, pushing out the misery and griping that had hung over them all for so long.
Rick laughed with the disbelief that something had finally gone right for him, plunging his hands into the burlap sack carefully marked with 'Loot' and bringing up fistfuls of clean, crisp banknotes. He looked up and started to say that he thought that everything was going to be alright from now on, but what came out instead was "Aargh! Look out! Cliff!"
There was indeed a large billboard proclaiming the date of Cliff Richard's funeral looming up in the path of the stolen mode of public transport and despite Mike's desperate manoeuvring of the wheel, they hurtled helplessly towards it. They crashed through the pop star's post-humus, but still charming, grin and began hurtling ironically down the side of the cliff face the billboard had hidden from view, screaming all the way. They'd wanted to go out with a bang, now it seemed that they would really get their wish, which is why people always tell you to be careful what you wish for… although of course the people who say it are usually senile and are planning to give you an oversized knitted sweater whatever you wish for anyway.
Strangely enough, the crashing impact they had all been expecting never happened. So they waited… and then they waited a little more and when still nothing happened they uncurled themselves from whatever ineffectual foetal position they had rolled into and peered cautiously out of the bus windows. They were floating high above the ground up in the air, which was really rather odd as buses are not well known for their flying skills, more their falling skills when launched off the side of a steep cliff.
"Bloody hell!" Vyv proclaimed with a grin, pressing his nose to the glass and peering at the ground, perilously far below. "We're flying!"
"I'm air sick…" The middle aged hippy groaned, crouching down and wedging himself beneath one of the seats. "Heavy…"
"You're right Neil, this bus is very heavy, why aren't we dead?" Mike pushed his orange-haired friend and one-time tyrannical bodyguard out of his way and took a turn looking out of the window. Climbing up to stand on one of the seats, he opened the top half of the window and leaned out a little way, staring first up and then down.
After a few moments he silently pulled his head in, closed the window and sat down very deliberately. The others crowded around him.
"What is it, Mike?"
The smartly dressed, sun-bespectacled man took a deep breath. "We've landed in a hot air balloon…"