Sorry to disappoint, Bruce, but I've always considered the general public to be totally unprepared for such a cataclysm as me in lycra shorts.
Enough! - On to today’s significant adventure (adventure? Pah!) - it was penned around the same time that we were discussing jug handles and similar forms of motoring hazard during my early Cellar days.
The five-entry, counter-rotating, traffic roundabout at Swindon is relatively unique, there being only a couple more of these strange inventions elsewhere in the UK, and so it warranted a story both to complement and to explain its existence, I thought. It seemed like a good idea at the time – a bit like the way the sherry trifle after a plate of pickled onions does, well, once you’ve consumed 5 pints of beer and four double whiskies. Anyway, here it is….
Magycke Rond-y-boote
As a high-spirited and impressionable spotty teenager, books on the occult formed obligatory reading material, and amongst the authors to be counted upon for suitable under-the-bed-sheets-with-torch (just have to practise inserting those hyphens) moments was the master of writers, Dennis Wheatley, a producer of such wonderful titles as ‘The Devil Rides Out’, ‘They Used Dark Forces’ and ‘The Satanist’.
Central to all his stories was the
pentacle, a circle containing a five-pointed star, the gateway to hell and all things evil for the satanic practitioner, or sanctuary for the hero preparing to do battle with demons and ghouls (and all things nasty from deep down there).
Why should this information be relevant? All will become clear very shortly. Prepare to be traumatised. Make sure you are firmly seated and there is nothing breakable close by, as what I am about to relate will surely taunt and anger the dark ones. If the room suddenly turns icy cold and steam falls upon your breath where before there was none, it might be best that you do not continue. The risk and decision is completely yours.
For there is a place to the west of London, where a pentacle exists for all to see. Not only that, the local population is encouraged daily to enter inside its boundary. To do so, however is to place oneself in extreme danger for a battle between good and evil rages within. The innocent is not aware until it may be too late. This text is therefore given as a warning for its readers - the truth about this mystical, dangerous object. Read on with care and cross and garlic close at hand…
What is this place and where its location? In modern tongue it is named the Magic Roundabout, a revised spelling of its former name, for this device existed there long before its present manifestation. The original Magycke Rond-y-boote was strategically located (as is the new) not only on the east-west
ley line that traverses London and Bath, but also at its junction with the north-south line linking Southampton with Coventry. There is likely no more influential or powerful positioning possible within the UK. And the name of this place? – why, the town of Swindon which is quite near Slough (not pronounced Sloff or Sloo*, but Slow – no. no, no not slow like Slo, but Slow as in cow – my goodness this is becoming far more difficult than I had ever expected – down to a goblin or two popping up to interfere in my mission, I have no doubt!).
The approach to the pentacle (for so I now shall call it, by it’s true name and not some disguising euphemism) seems safe enough. Like any other roundabout it appears, but there’s the trick, for at each pentacular point lies a smaller roundabout, and, before the innocent entrant realises, he is caught inside an ever circling infinity – first clockwise (as with all things round and British), as he initially attempts to move around the outside, but soon he is drawn inwards and the rotation reverses – anticlockwise (the devil’s rotation) he now must go, and before he has a chance to think he is back where he started, so once again he tries but with little chance of any more success than before. Round and round, backwards and forwards, endlessly, endlessly…
But there are those who understand the pentacle’s secret, how to turn the forces against themselves and extricate a safe and timely exit. The good knights of the pentacle - recognisable from their strange and silent transports, containing bottles filled with milk. Early morning heroes these, their coming heralded by the sounds of jingling glass next to an overwrought hair-drier. So go carefully would-be traveller and do not venture close if a
knight of Saint Unigate’s order is not at hand.
I could have (would have if I could have worked out how to do same) placed a picture here before your eyes upon this site of this amazing devilry, but better I feel that the forces are kept at bay. And so you must follow the link I set out below…
Follow here for safe passage to the Magycke Rond-y-boote
Just one last thing – I’m completely out of garlic and had intended to cook tonight a delightful continental dish requiring same – don’t suppose you could send me that clove or two you appear to be clutching in your left hand….
* or Sluff, I forgot to mention Sluff