Well things might be looking up

Department X has been almost obliterated because of illness, injury and indolence. Billy the Kid is a slacker as everyone knows, so him not being at work is par for the course. Little Lee is off due to a car accident. Hardly surprising. He cannot be big enough to see over the dash board. Mike the Mouth is off sick because he's just back from holiday and he always gets sick on holiday.

Another floppy haired fool has given in his notice so the Deparment is only function because of the labour of a couple of Uni students we'll be losing in the next two or three weeks. After that they're screwed unless the slackers can be kicked into something like shape by the Big Swinging Dick in the meantime.

Junior Talent Team

Hardly had I heard the last word on Crack Head when we received a tip (from Kids, OK) that we had a tribe of little kids "nicking stuff". Off I went with The Ferret. We make a fine tag team wandering up and down cornering the little shitters. There they were, eventually, attempting to make a nonchalant getaway with their one drawstring bag over the should of the smallest of the lot.

The Bolshie Book Worm joined us in the cornering and demanded the contents of the bag. The smallest, for it was he carrying the bag, made some play of being unable to open it and tried to palm the thing off on to one of his mates. I think he'd slightly missed the point behind him being the bag carrier not that any of them were likely to be more than 12 years old.

When his mates declined to take the bag and open it he did what BBW was asking and from it she extracted a double Galaxy bar pack. They'd not got the vodka they were aiming for. BBW sent them off with a flea in their collective ear, the tallest though not necessarily the eldest almost in tears and protesting as he went that "it ain't nuffin' ta do wiff me".

Outside they rejoined their parents to whom they had (I suspect) to confess that they'd been rumbled and unable to snatch the booze.