Att presentera ett svin

"The scent rolled over him.
He looked up.
Overhead, a lilac tree was in bloom.
He stared.
  Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn't want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days...
  He reached up, and his hand trembled as he broke the stem. He sniffed at it. He stood for a moment, staring at nothing. And then he carried the sprig of lilac carefully back up to his dressing room."




"'Sarge?'
'Yes, Corporal Ping?'
'Why're some of you wearing purple flowers, sarge?'
  There was a subtle change in the atmosphere. a suction of sound caused by many pairs of ears listening intently. All the officers in the room had stopped writing.
   'I mean, I saw you and Reg and Nobby wearing 'em this time last year, and I wondered if we were all supposed to...' Ping faltered. Sergeant Colon's normally amiable eyes had narrowed and the message they were sending was: You're on this ice, lad, and it's starting to creak...
  'I mean, my landlady's got a garden and I could easily go and cut a-" Ping went on, in an uncharacteristic attempt at suicide.
  'You'd wear the lilac today, would you?' said Colon quietly.
  'I just meant that if you wanted me to I could go and-'
  'Were you there?" said Colon, getting to his feet so fast that his chair fell over.
  'Steady, Fred,' murmured Nobby.
  'I  didn't mean-' Ping began. ' I mean... was I where, sarge?"
  Colon leaned on the desk, bringing his round face an inch away from Ping's nose. 'If you don't know where there was, you weren't there,' he said, in the same quiet voice."


"'Lads, you're just flapping your mouths. There's been fighting, and here you are with all your arms and legs and walking around in the gods' good sunlight. That's winning, that is. You've won, see. The rest is just gravy.'
  No one spoke for a while until young Sam said: 'But Nancyball didn't win.'"


"John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil 'Snouty' Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there."

(I know I didn't get them in purple, sorry about that. In fact I'm not even sure I've got the right flower. But I blame living in a capital)