weave his way through the virtually parked cars to get to it.
'I need a drink,' he said, talking to me over his shoulder as he walked. 'Got any money with you?'
The large pub was as busy inside as the streets were outside. The air stank of stale smoke and spilled beer and every room was filled to capacity (and probably beyond) with tightly-packed punters. I pushed my way through the heaving throng and managed to worm my way into a gap at the bar. I then stood and waited for almost fifteen minutes before being served by a stressed-out and sweat-soaked member of staff. I bought a drink for Rob and one for myself (because I was too tired and thirsty to wait for him to offer to buy a round) and then looked for somewhere to sit.
'Cheers,' my brother gasped as he lifted his hand and took his pint from me. He knocked back half of his drink, wiped his mouth and stifled a belch. 'Too bloody busy in here,' he grumbled. 'Shall we go back outside?'
I nodded and began to push my way back towards the door. By the time we'd fought our way out most of my beer had been spilt but I didn't even contemplate trying to get back to the bar to get a refill. Tired and strangely dejected I found a space and sat down on a low stone wall.
'I can't get over how busy it is,' Rob said.
'What, the pub or the town?' I grumbled under my breath. He scowled at me.
'The town, you idiot,' he snapped.
'What did you expect?'
'I didn't think it would be as bad as this. Still, there's a good atmosphere, isn't there?'
He was right. Even though I was in a bad mood, most other people seemed to be enjoying themselves. For once there was no sign of the tightly-packed population being anywhere near as volatile, harassed or bad-tempered as it normally was. But having said that Dreighton somehow didn't feel right to me. Maybe it was just me being miserable. Most people were acting as if it was carnival day, but as far as I could see no-one was wearing any costumes, I couldn't hear very much music and the stationary traffic jam running the length of the main road wasn't much of a parade.
'Think we're going to see one tonight?'
I shrugged my shoulders.
'Don't know,' I replied honestly. 'You'd have thought so. There are over three hundred of them, aren't there?'
'Yes but they're surrounded by about six million of us!'
I turned and looked at him. He was talking rubbish. Nothing unusual in that, but this was rapidly becoming relentless, high-speed rubbish. He was genuinely excited like a kid on the morning of their birthday.
'What do you think they make of this place?' he asked. 'Wonder what their towns are like? Do you think they have pubs like this or...'
'I expect they think Dreighton's a shit-hole,' I sighed, interrupting and hoping to stem the flow from his mouth. 'I do.'
'I bet they don't have shops. Bet it's all done from home on an Internet kind of thing. I bet this is like taking a massive step back in time. This will seem all dirty to them. They'll be used to sterile conditions I expect. When you think about the technology they've got...'
He stopped talking.
I looked up to see what was wrong and saw that he was staring further along the street. There was a huge crowd approaching.
'Fucking hell,' he gasped, 'this must be it. Bloody hell, this must be it! I bet there's one of them in that lot.'
We looked at each other for a fraction of a second before putting down our glasses and jumping up. The mass of figures was now only some ten or fifteen metres away and I could see that as they moved down the street in a huge wave, more and more onlookers were picked up and carried along with the flow. From where I was standing all that I could see was heads. I climbed up onto the wall we'd been sitting on and then jumped over onto a wooden table, landing right in the middle of someone's round of drinks.
'Bloody hell,' a man's annoyed voice spat from below me. 'What the hell are you doing...?'
He immediately stopped speaking when he became aware of the approaching noise. He looked over his shoulder momentarily (he had his back to the road) before clambering up onto the table next to me. I lost sight of