Sentence the Fourhundredandfourteenth

The astonishingly energetic WPC Isa Urquhart displayed her prowess as she competently co-ordinated all of Robyn Macnamara's interviews with the Soldiers of D Platoon in Auntie Crist's back-room with it's dramatic view of The Eildon Hills in which they all said they had spent approximately three months of 1968 – although this was now forty-eight years later and Ms Macnamara, the Consul-General of the United States based in Edinburgh, had changed into more formal dress for the business at hand, and had couched her comments to them regarding 'The War'

and it's 'progress' in general terms, while not shielding them from the fact that no matter how 'present' they may feel in terms of their recent experiences, nonetheless, a lot of water had passed under that particular bridge since yesterday and Isa was very taken with the way her cadences reflected the empathy she obviously had for these poor men and there was something lyrical, almost Pierian in her language and the imagery it invoked; she had requested a special force of counsellors to address the emotional and social issues now facing them – the deaths of their parents and the lives of their siblings, wives, children even, indeed possible remarriages of their (by now) much older wives, even children who would in some cases be older than their fathers; they each had an enormous back-pay owing to them and a team of accountants would also be visiting to assess the differences between those amounts and any widows pensions or other benefits which have to be clawed back to balance the books; a group from Human Resources would be coming to discuss their re-integration into civilian life – they were all still of working age, despite the fact that 'Officially' they were all past retirement age and this was a conundrum, inside a Rubik's Cube, set to the tune of an eightsome reel, played by the Monty Sunshine Dance Band from Lilliesleaf, still led by 92-year-old Monty on the

fiddle, with his 76-year-old brother Sonny on drums, 65-year-old son on Bass and vocals and wife Drusilla on piano-accordion and vocals (a girl does not ask a lady her age, particularly when she is obviously well over the speed limit!) and their opening number: The Beatles When I'm 64 introducing a heavy dose of irony, along with their iron tablets and Monty's zimmer, just out of sight behind the speakers, at least got the toes tapping and drew the other visitors, waifs and strays, from all over the house and turned the occasion into a mini-Woodstock, something the soldiers had missed due to a quirk of the Space/Time continuum which, in their case, had really fucked up!