Club Autonomie

…The establishment opposite which he kept his vigil rejoiced in the name ‘Club Autonomie’, and announced itself - misleadingly, it has been said - as a community centre.

…this personage from previous dealings, she being none other than Medusa the gorgon, the dreadlocked lady beadle of Club Autonomie, under the baleful gaze of whom he had all those years before sworn off the powders which had blighted his matrimony. The present encounter served only to augment his vexation, for he did not like to be called to the recollection of this unhappy episode.

…During this period, rabble-rousers came to the fore, the most prominent among these being Medusa, the gorgon of Club Autonomie in Robertson Road. Her career under the media spotlight ought to have been a short one, given her propensity to petrify the souls of nearly everyone who was so unfortunate as to make her acquaintance. And such must inevitably have been the case, had it not been for a singular…

Club Autonomie had changed but little in the intervening decades, save that its air of dilapidation had become somewhat more pronounced. The same calls to revolution papered the windows, and were obscured by the same accretions of grime. And it seemed that the same weather presided over the place, for a viscous and slimy rain began to dribble from the uniform greyness overhead, and Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet recalled that this…