The final whistle blew. For perhaps half a second, Gerbil World Cup HQ was silent.
Griselda stood up so fast her chair fell over backwards.
“COME ON!”
The room exploded.
Gertrude launched herself onto the bar and somehow had an accordion before anyone saw where it had come from.
Gloop rang the bar bell continuously for nearly a minute while customers who didn’t exist cheered anyway.
Greta burst through the stationery cupboard wearing a St George’s flag as a cape and carrying what appeared to be emergency fireworks labelled FOR ADMINISTRATIVE USE ONLY.
Nobody questioned this.
The first rocket went through the open skylight. The second went through the closed one. Within moments the entire car park had become an impromptu village fête.
Someone started a conga.
Someone else started Jerusalem.
The conga absorbed Jerusalem without slowing down.
A karaoke machine materialised from nowhere.
“Vindaloo” began.
Halfway through the chorus, three tiny motorcycles appeared.
No witness was ever able to explain where from. Five gerbils formed a pyramid. Then seven. Then, in what several observers later described as “an ambitious engineering decision”, nine.It completed three triumphant laps of the car park to deafening applause.
Gertrude was now playing the accordion one-pawed while standing on Gloop’s shoulders.
Gleaner released a thousand biodegradable red and white balloons and then released confetti cannons.
Griselda hugged absolutely everyone. Twice.
By the time the celebrations finally subsided, the karaoke machine had given up, every sunflower seed in the building had been eaten, there were scorch marks on the roof, and nobody could remember whose motorcycles they were.
England had won and it turned out the Bluestocking did actually care after all.
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