[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Outside, behind the cordons, the swarming masses were calming down. The security Uruks were beginning to relax slightly, and liveried guards were considering the now rather stained carpet and asking one another whose fault this would be come the morning. Reporters for minor journals were pontificating wildly about events within in a desperate attempt to sound as though they had been invited there, and many of their sound crews had already gone for cigarette breaks regardless, an act of mercy to the general public that was destined to go unrewarded.

Into the midst of this maelstrom of anticlimax pulled a somewhat nondescript London black cab. From its open driver's-side window came the sound of an animated monologue:
"Like I said, Squire: 'angin's too good fer 'em. Dunno 'oo woz in charge of 'irin' 'em, but I call it a bleedin' disgrace: bloomin' Uruks on the door. It'll be Balrogs next. 'Ad one of 'em in me cab once. Filthy bleeder couldn't 'ardly get 'is wings in and then it took me a week ter clean the scorch marks off. 'Angin's too good fer 'em..."

The rear door of the unhandsome cab swung open rather hurriedly and its sole passenger handed over a few odd-looking notes, insisting that the cabbie, who was still in full swing and now complaining about Dunlendings, whom he accused against all the evidence to the contrary of wanting to steal his job, keep the rather substantial change. His thoughts at that moment were unprintable, but under his breath he was murmuring "O brave new world, That hath such people in't!"

Slamming the door behind him with a grateful sigh, the no-longer captive audience straightened the lapels of his black overcoat and tweaked a silk bow tie into a yet more geometrically perfect shape. Perching his wide-brimmed trilby at a jauntier angle and pulling his long pony-tail out from inside his coat, the Squatter of Amon Rûdh made his way past a pair of cameramen, who were arguing about which had got a better shot of that dress and round to a side entrance, where he handed a somewhat dog-eared ticket to the particularly large and brutish door-ward and was grudgingly admitted. The door-Uruk hated it when people had tickets.

Inside, the hat was removed and became a receptacle for a pair of black leather gloves and a white scarf. Removing his coat he wandered off in search of a flunky and eventually found one who didn't take him for a waiter. Tipping the man for his grudging service with a nine-shilling note, which bore the head of Edward VIII and the date 1982, he pulled his black dinner jacket so that it hung more comfortably, straightened his cummerbund and shot his cuffs. Then he made for the bar, muttering something about time zones and bloody-minded scripts.

Armed with a treble Macallan, a rather more relaxed Squatter located a seat somewhere near the middle of the audience that the cameras were ignoring and made a bee-line for it, deftly liberating a glass of champagne from a passing tray as he walked. A man may attend prestigious events for many reasons: to make career contacts; to rub shoulders with the great and the good; even simply to soak up the atmosphere. Squatter was in it for the free booze.

[ May 01, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]