This experiment is not succeeding. Apparently Chris thinks Hexy isn't much of a looker.
''Think I'll go into town.'' Yo-yo sips his milk. ''Do some shopping.''
''Better get dressed first,'' growls Lily Gusset, clearly in a masculine role today. ''You can't go out like that.'' Yo-yo's nightshirt has rucked up over his knee. ''You'll get had up or felt up or both. By a lovely young filly with a policewoman's hat and a deep truncheon pouch, fnarr fnarr. You'll be tossing around in her cuffs before you can say 'Mind me helmet', hurrr hurrr.''
''Here you go.'' Aunty Latch slides Yo-yo a plated bacon and tomato roll. ''Can you take Mrs Lollipop's toast and marmalade up, Reefer?''
With a grumbling rumble, Uncle Reefer takes off and Yo-yo munches happily on his bacon and tomato roll. Unsurprisingly, he isn't allowed tomatoes in Gillworthy. They're said to be suggestive. And as for a roll, forget it. Even Matron Majeiskii won't give him a roll, though Orderly Henke might for a price.
When he has finished, he goes up to dress. But what to wear? He has packed for every eventuality. He tries on a succession of combinations from his rucksack and appears in
grey hooded sweatshirt pale blue jeans green socks
purple T-shirt green jeans white socks
dark blue sweater white knee-length shorts black socks
navy blue athletics vest navy blue silky shorts no socks
red York City shirt black York City shorts red York City socks
saffron Buddhist monk's robe and brown leather sandals
green Speedo swimming trunks and black tinted goggles
black wetsuit
He settles for the athletics combination, although he's tempted by the robes. Yellowy orange. Could do a lot with those. Mind you, he would have to shave his head and he's not too keen on losing the dusty orange mop that earned him the nickname 'Jaffa' in his first weeks at Gillworthy. The athletics vest has a logo stitched up across the chest -Runners do it faster. The shorts are cut mid-thigh. Rue and Thyme will like that. He ties the laces on his silver trainers, picks up his rucksack and goes out.
It isn't far from the COZEE NOOK to the city centre. Yo-yo walks past Clifton Parish Church (the blue and gold clock reads 10.10), the Old Grey Mare, a B & B serving John Smith's, a bitter he scorns, and the Cottage Hotel, a Spar and a post office, the red-brick-and-spired Clifton Methodist Church, Clifton Preparatory School for Boys and Girls aged 3 to 8 and Clifton Bingo facing it. At St Peter's School (founded in 627 A.D. by St Paulinus, Archbishop of York, and the third oldest school in the world) he pauses. It is now co-ed and independent, boarding and day, and he reflects, as the boys in brown blazers cross the footbridge and enter the gates, that this is the school that produced that embittered patriot Guido Fawkes. Further up the road, after Bootham Crescent, where York City F.C. disappoint their fans week after week, he passes another school, at Number 51, with two large Ionic columns on either side of an imposing blue door and two bas-relief columns behind them, an affectation repeated on the first-floor balcony. This school is administered by the Society of Friends (Quakers) for pupils aged 11-18, and is named after the road itself, Bootham. Virtually next door is the home of Joseph Rowntree (1836-1925), purveyor of confectionary to the nation, pioneer of research and reform on social policy and industrial relations, a three-storey red-brick house with white window frames, black iron railings and a blue door with a black knocker. Yo-yo debates utilising said knocker and asking for a Kit Kat, but cannot be sure of the reception he would get so opts to continue his walk. He passes BBC Radio York, what used to be the
OFF-LICENCE, NEWS, FOODSTORE
of Jackson's of Bootham and the Bootham Tavern (''No children under 12. Children over 12 must leave by 8 p.m.'' for heaven's sake), Wormholes Bookshop and the brown-and white-coloured Private Shop where they watch dodgy movies and play BBC Radio 2 all day, and arrives at the triple-shielded, triple-statued, magnificently medieval Bootham Bar. A plaque informs him that
Bootham is from the Old West Scandinavian word Buthum (1150) ''at the booth's'', implying a district of humble or temporary dwellings. Jurisdiction was disputed between the City and St Mary's Monastery. It was the main road into the City
from the North and is on the line of the Roman Road.
He looks longingly at The Exhibition (serving John Smith's), and heads across the road to the Bar itself where another plaque tells him that
This marks the site of the Porta Principalis Dextra (North West Gate) of the Roman Fortress. The foundations were rebuilt c. 300 AD and lie just below the ground
Next to the plaque is the Gents toilet. Yo-yo goes in. It smells. He stands at a urinal and lets out all the tea he has drunk with a sigh and then becomes aware of a smell even more overpowering than that of the urine, the smell of perfumed forget-me-nots.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! he cries.
''Sell me your ring,'' breathes Mister Vanilla from the next urinal. ''I'll give you a pink dolly for it.''
Mister Vanilla produces a china doll with ludicrously blonde curls.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! cries Yo-yo, and runs out of the toilets.
''I'll take good care of it,'' calls Mister Vanilla, zipping up his very large trousers.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! yells Yo-yo.
''Sorry,'' says a tourist. ''Y'all dress like that, y'all get what y'all deserve.''
''No,'' says another tourist. ''It's his right to dress as he likes.''
''But,'' says Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio Two, ''Aren't the shorts provocative?''
''Well,'' says the first tourist, ''Where I come from, the boy'd be horsewhipped. In Thicktwistle Alabama, we don't tolerate these slutty little hoes running round in their skimpy clothing.''
Jeremy Vine: Some people say that runners need to wear shorts.
Tourist: Nonsense. They’re making an excuse for filth. That’s what it is, Jeremy, filth, pure filth. It’s disgusting. Justice 4 kiddies.
Jeremy Vine: Mona McBonkers, social worker and columnist in the Daily Wail, what do you think?
Mona McBonkers: Well, Jeremy, research proves that 98% of people who wear shorts are simply exhibitionists and examples of male patriarchal oppression. Basically they’d rather be flashing their penises than their legs. It’s a fact that men are oppressive bastards who need castrating ….no offence to you, Jeremy….
''I hate Radio bloody Two,'' says Yo-yo, switching off the set.
People are staring from the grid-locked bus, the driver of which is still cursing and hooting impotently. God, they've been there all night. Yo-yo collects himself and reties the drawstring of his shorts. He is in Exhibition Square, so-named in 1879 because of the Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition of that year for which the City Gallery was erected. The statue of William Etty R.A. (born in York 1787, elected Royal Academician 1828, died 1849), shouts ''On to the walls! Get to on to the walls!'', and, as Yo-yo dashes up the ancient, medieval steps, William Etty R.A. comes down from his plinth to grapple with Mister Vanilla.
''I am the most under-rated painter of my generation!'' yells William Etty R.A.
''You painted too many nudes,'' explains Mister Vanilla, ''Especially women with big thighs and generous boobies that you pretended were nymphs, you dirty old man.''
''Right!'' shouts William Etty R.A., trying to twist Mister Vanilla's arm into a half-nelson. ''Right! That does it!''
''Get off, you old fool!'' shouts Mister Vanilla as William Etty R.A. wrestles his bulk to the floor.
The tourists take photos.
''Ha,'' says Suki, ''This is good sport. The lunner is good.''
''Yes,'' says Miyumi, ''He fast.''
''Faster than fat man.''
''Yes.'' The camera clicks. Yo-yo is captured in mid-stride. He looks surprised, like a haddock in a sheet of newspaper suddenly surrounded by chips and vinegar.
''Here's the fat one.'' Suki clicks the camera, gets a lensful of bellies. Yo-yo scrambles up the steps as Mister Vanilla and William Etty R.A. wrestle like Don Giovanni and the Commen
datore in a WWF-cage.
''You'll never take him alive!'' yells William Etty R.A.
''Get off, you old, dead fool!'' shouts Mister Vanilla, pinning the painter to the ground with his forty-stone stomachs. ''Have a sugared dandelion and get back to your plinth.''
William Etty, R.A, accepts the sweet and immediately crumbles into a pile of powder.
''Ha ha,'' cries Mister Vanilla. ''The boy is mine!''
''Not fair,'' says Miyumi, capturing as much as she can on her Samstung.
''No, not fair,'' agrees Suki, snapping everything on her Nookia.
Yo-yo dashes across the road and darts up the medieval steps to the medieval walls and Bootham Gate whilst Mister Vanilla heaves himself upright and lumbers after him. He is panting like an asthmatic walrus with a heart condition who has just climbed Great Whernside but he will not allow Yo-yo's ring to escape him now. Not now. Even if he has a heart attack in the process. Even if William Etty R.A. recovers enough to slam-dunk him into a doughnut. Even if he is photographed and posted on MyFace with his pants on his head and a cat in his lap. Yo-yo's ring belongs to him, and he will seize it.