So Apollo is walking through Brent Cross one morning, just kind’a minding his own business, although being the god of music, prophecy, poetry, medicine and the Sun, most things were his business, one way or another. And he came across Athena. Not the poster shop but like the actual, real, goddess of war. “Hey babe”, he called out across the Marks and Spencer doorway, “how’s it hanging?”

“Don’t you fucking ‘babe’ me, you proto-misogynistic anachronism” (a reference to three of their cousins, Protos, the god of foreplay, Mysogyny, the god of wife-beating and Chronos, the god of time, but whose fame came from swallowing all his own babies whole, as they were born).

“I’m here to do battle. Like all women I like to fight, disagree, complain and bemoan, but unlike the rest, I carry a fucking great sword, swear like a navvy and can hit you with my knife from 100 yards whilst running backwards”.
“There’s a new God in town and I need to kill him, eat him, have babies with him or turn him into a 5-headed snake with the legs of an elephant and the face of Nicola Sturgeon”, Athena said.

“A new God??”, Apollo inquired? “Like with a capital G???? That’s a bit controversial. We only get small gs.”

“Well, He’s not really ‘new’, in fact he’s the oldest of us all, apparently. Some dude called Moses brought him down from Mount Olympus, way back when, or some such tale. Hard to believe really. And coming from someone who was born fully adult, cleaved from her father’s head, the bar for ‘believable’ is pretty low. Anyway, I need to kill him because… well, I’m a god, its just what we do. But there’s a rumour going round that he’s omnipotent AND omniscient. So not only is probably pretty hard to kill but its like he’s bugged the entire world and the heavens and even the underworld, so His intel is awesome.”
“He started off just being God to a few Jews, then to all the Christians, once they took off, then all these Catholics and Mormons and even the Greeks and Romans. And now they even believe that one old guy could actually replace all of us! Like you could have the portfolio for wine and for victory at the same time. For the winds and mothers and for stars? How would you find the time?”

“Well, you’d get Chronos to make you some more. But why in Brent Cross?” Apollo demanded. “Is this where he lives?”

“Well, definitely somewhere in north-west London, obviously. Golders Green, Hendon… not Edgware because Hades got there first. He allegedly supports Spurs and won’t drive on Saturdays, so he can’t be any further from Tottenham than this.”

“Ok, you sort out God, I’m off to find Hermeseta, the god of artifice and sweetness, we’re going to fly into the Sun with Icarus airlines and we need to do a PCR test.”

“Yes, I will kill and murder and maim and torture!!! And then there will be peace.”

Amen.

A xxxx