Rosie Pink and the Big Battle at the WI IHMN Day.

[Silbuster]

Miss Pink here. Rosie Pink of the Suffragette Snipers. Bit of a lark this because I am standing on the roof of Scotland Yard! No wonder the commissioner always looks so chipper. London certainly looks better when you are this high above the riffraff. Below us the flags are fluttering in the breeze as that ancient relic Queen Victoria totters into her armoured carriage en route for the docks. Well, I am afraid that is one appointment she will not be keeping. The old girl has rather got it into her noggin that women’s emancipation is a bad show. Consequently, today is the day she jolly well tootles off into the sunset.

And she’s off! The carriage carrying the Great Stench of Reactionary Thought trundles forwards. And, speaking of stench, a tidal wave of the great unwashed cascades over the park wall behind her as the Brick Lane Anarchists and Akhenaton’s cultists set off in pursuit. It would have to be said that the idea of the all too Common Man (or Woman) gaining the vote gives one pause for thought. Akhenaton though, a five thousand year old pharaoh, now there is royalty for you. Suddenly the seething mob comes under fire from a company of British soldiery from a nearby roof where they can bravely shoot peasants with no fear of close combat. Miss Scarlett, our Saboteuse, very decently warns them that she has placed an infernal device amongst them but they pay no heed. Makes you proud to be British does it not? The bomb goes off as do a good third of them putting on a fine display of Mr Newton’s theories regarding parabolic trajectories for our benefit. One red coated missile even very civilly demonstrates Mr Doppler’s effect as he hurtles overhead.
“yyyyooooOOOOOOoooowwww!”
This scientific stuff is super isn’t it! So very modern. Their sergeant spots us and lets off a round so Sniper Sue pops him off. Their medic rushes to revive him so I pop him off too and the rest scuttle off the roof. I say! Is this the spirit which won our empire? Poor show, you know.

They race off to join the general scrimmage around Victoria’s secret carriage where Dr Chen and his Terracotta Men are attempting to hold off the unhygienic hordes. Thank heavens that I cannot whiff that lot from up here. Even the mindless golems are holding their noses. A couple of lower class scoundrels fire into the melee but we soon pop them off. Down below, Miss Lai leads the ladies’ charge into the melee. Foreign gel but a decent sort. Wears trousers, you know. Sometimes I think there can be a little bit too much progress… Anyway, Dr Chen’s Flowerpot Men and the British Redcoats are submerged beneath the seething masses who are obviously more desperate for a vote than I had thought. Yet still the Black Queen keeps rolling on in her Death Machine crushing all before her with the dead weight of Imperialist aggression. Even surrounded by all and sundry and with the assistance of an industrial walker, it does not slow. Gosh this is exciting stuff! At this point, Miss Lai takes a tumble and Miss Blondie takes over. The gossip is that she is rather a FAST sort, young Miss Blondie. She has a REPUTATION, what! Miss Blondie leaps onto a passing Warburton’s delivery lorry, kicks the driver in the jewels, launches him into space and then rams Queenie’s carriage. It slows but it is still not enough! But it cannot escape now. Practically engulfed in humanity, finally its armour cracks and the Queen, carrying her trusty gatling gun, together with several special branch men emerge for a short but pointed discussion with her disappointed subjects. At the end of which, Miss Scarlett dons the crown. Super spiffing!

Our cunning plan is coming together. Far off, in the theatre, an aria is cut short on a high and painful C as the fat lady stops singing forever.  Which is the signal that yet more freedom loving peoples have succeeded in their quest for ….err…. freedom. And here they are, our Russian revolutionaries running down to the docks to assist the assault on the Queen’s getaway ship, HMS Evil. And gosh, reinforcements are certainly needed. Our allies from the TotenKopf battalion have been having an awfully hard time pushing back those red coated ruffians of the Outdated Army. I must say though that the Prussians look damn smart in their spick and span uniforms standing rigidly to attention and clad in the latest rebreathing gear.  An improvement on our own rather sloppy chaps. In fact, just to make our feelings known, we shoot a couple of them blocking the gangway. On charge the Square Heads squaring up to the surviving Tommies accompanied by our own Gertrude Green. What a trooper! But what’s this? Heavens to Betsy, the wicked Knights Templar are pouring in to plug the gap while Special Branch and armed sailors sortie from their hiding places. Well, despite all the nice girls loving a uniform, we decide that you can stuff that for a game of soldiers and pop off a couple of deckhands. Annie we-know-who and the Lady in Black move up to shoot at close range only to find the situation changing in an instant.

The Russkies are stopped dead by one of those ghastly gas grenades, that should be banned under the Clapham Convention, while a stray shot on HMS Evil hits the displacement engine. The engines canna take it and are set to self-destruct in five turns. Cue abandon ship! Poor old Gerty looks like she might be stuck but we pop off a couple of Templars who are blocking the way and she makes it off. Super Spiffing Fantasticus! But what the deuce can this be! I can scarcely believe my eyes. Every child’s nightmare, the wicked beyond belief Professor Potts is attempting to leave the sinking ship like the rat he is by climbing a rope up to his Murder Machine Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Well, fear no more  children. The Prof is no more. He was a sitting rat… err duck.

And so the Sun sets as the crowds cheer in what is now definitively Suffragette City. Corking! This is even better than hockey!

Rosie Pink and her jolly big gun.

[Craig]

As always Silibuster, you cheer up my morning with your reports 

It was really nice to meet you in the flesh, though I was surprised by your floral frock and multitude of petticoats 

[Silbuster]

As always Silibuster, you cheer up my morning with your reports 

It was really nice to meet you in the flesh, though I was surprised by your floral frock and multitude of petticoats 

My case comes up next week.

For those interested in the build up to the competition:

“By Jove”, I thought, polishing me monocle, “that filly puts the Eiffel Tower in the shade! Hang on a mo’ though, that’s no lady, that’s Lee Mai, chief agent of that unprincipled bounder John McClellan of the Most Dishonourable East India Company. There’s devilry afoot here or my name’s not Brigadier Blimp of the Ministry of Foreign Tosh.” I resolved to keep a bulging eye on her which was not too difficult apart from having to wipe the steam off me eyepiece from time to time.. And it was while I was feverishly demisting me lens that she almost gave me the slip. But I followed her all the way alright to a dingy backwater in Olde Londone Towne and a rendezvous with Diamond Annie herself. Indeed! London’s very own Killer Queen. “There’s a knighthood in scuttling this skullduggery, old boy”, I thought. “Hell’s teeth! Considering this coven of assassins, mercenaries, saboteurs and Annie’s own ‘Pin your lugholes back with real pins” amazons, perhaps even a small title.” And it was while meditating pleasingly on my brilliant career that I ran into Miss Mai while turning a corner. Well, I hesitated. And he who hesitates finds a poisoned blade sticking out of his chest. So it is that I am presently prostrate in me pyjamas in St Ethelred’s hospital for the unwary dictating the following description of this nest of vipers in England’s bosom. For the nation is in peril and must be warned!

If only I were well enough to join you in thwarting their dastardly plan. I await only me medic’s opinion. And here he is with his ministering angels. “Hello Doctor, what news and what is that strange contraption you carry? It’s for sucking the poison out of me system? You must be mad, man. It looks as if it could suck an elephant out of a swamp! No fear! What! Unhand me you blackguards. Step back fiend. I’m warning you! Help, mummy!”

Yours truly,
Brave Brigadier Blimp of the FT

P.S. Here are some photos of the villains taken before being taken out.