MR CRASS CHESEHAM’S ROLE IN THE GREAT ARROGATION —
Mr Crass Cheseham
Upon Montpelier there some years ago befell the singular event known as ‘The Great Arrogation’, when that suburb had bestowed upon it the dubious privilege of sending no less than three delegates to sit in the Council Chamber. —
Montpelier, The Great Arrogation
Montpelier festers away in an eternal dog-day, seemingly oblivious of its distinction, behind the façade of shabby-genteel Victorian Gothic screening it from the ragamuffin gaze of Ashley Road. The principal thoroughfare of this loathsome trustafarian zoo is Picton Street, which staggers downhill away from the Sodom formed by the junction of Ashley Road and Stokes Croft, smacking an elbow against the concrete Gomorrah at the bottom, whereon there accumulate at all hours of the day and night a shifting collection of the oenophiles of the parish. Behind this Place de Cons, in a cul de sac, slumbers the Old Disgrace. —
Ashley Road, The Old Disgrace
The Disgrace boasts, if that is the word for it, a pedigree of some two hundred years of more or less continuous debauchery. Its genesis was as an establishment beyond the City walls, in virtue of which it lay also beyond the edict of the magistrates, and in this capacity it has ever since limned the, as it were, bordelline between respectable resort and knocking shop. In this manner the Disgrace has gone like the Buddha through multiple transformations, having been during different incarnations various combinations of health club, public house, informal … er … apothecary, burlesque theatre, dissenting house, headquarters of a cricket club, and live music venue. It has for a number of years now been the preferred watering hole of the local democratic socialist firebrands Jerome Jubeyter, Old MacDonald, Milton Djugashvili and their sidekick Chris Skeletor, these gentlemen favouring the front terrace, with its enchanting prospect over the refulgent Capability Brownesque carpark of the neighbouring medical practice. Here, fortified with lager and Talcum of Medellin, the triumvirate holds court; which is to say that they compete with the several resident charismatic eccentrics with big personalities for the desultory and fleeting attentions of such civilians as come to that place in search of kush and cheese. —
Milton Djugashvili, Chris Skeletor, The Old Disgrace, Jerome Jubeyter
Indeed, Montypee is and ever has been an excellent market for the snake oil of political visionaries. There is something in the air of the place, a dropsical miasma of unabashed alcoholism and sixth form political posturing, which of necessity attracts a transient population of footling aristocrats and flâneurs, ageing hippies and conspiracy theorists, unhygienic socialists and scrofulous anarchists, anti-vaccination activists and lotophagi, sex offenders, white rastas and mockney knaves, vandals and craque fumeurs and ghastly hipsters, defacers of walls, chimpanzees and howler monkeys, practitioners of public micturition, nudists and fruit-juice enthusiasts, incorrigible recidivists, and sundry other ne’er-do-wells. These morons huddle together in the outlandishly expensive terraces of the neighbourhood, of which many of the more privileged amongst them can afford the purchase outright, and fritter away their pottage in the pursuit of an ostentatiously fatuous bohemianism; and, being entirely credulous towards all fashionable nonsense, are preyed upon by every passing mesmerist. Which is as much as to say that those mangy lions Jerome Jubeyter, Old MacDonald, Milton Djugashvili, and their sidekick Chris Skeletor do not enjoy sole possession of the rotting carcass politic, but find themselves put to the necessity of contending for the spoils thereof with sundry hyenas and vultures who are wont to, as it were, make away with an electoral limb or liver as soon as the scavengers’ backs are turned. In this respect, their current bȇte noir is Sir Gerald Inhali, local satrap of the Blood & Soil Association and its political wing the Vert Rouge, in the interest of whom that gentleman has thrown his hat into the ring. Unlike his rivals, Sir Gerald is not of the parish, and chooses not to demean himself in the Old Disgrace, but rather to confine himself when not actively electioneering to the decidedly more salubrious purlieu of Hotwells, in an elegant and spacious if not quite mansion-sized establishment sheltering under the lip of Clifton Gorge. —
Sir Gerald Inhali
There was until The Great Arrogation a municipal organism, of robustly ontological materiality in virtue of its lengthy and serene occupation of space and time. This barnacle or limpet went by the name of Ashley Ward, and was glued to the North and the East flanks of the City Centre, in which capacity it sent three representatives to sit in the Council Chamber, who duly assumed their places alongside all their colleagues from Clifton and Bishopsworth and Bedminster, and the diverse other cantonments and barrios which it would not be in the least edifying to list on this page. Eventually, through the machinations of a frankly rather ghastly rabble of hipster anarcho-syndicalists, there came the day when Ashley found itself mutilated, which is to say bereft of its Northwest portion, viz. Montpelier. By this means, this grotty little suburb underwent a species of municipal apotheosis, being assumed into the ranks of the Cliftons & Bishopsworths & Bedminsters & diverse other cantonments & barrios which etc etc, and was therewith accorded the dignity of sending three of its own representatives to sit in the Council Chamber alongside all their colleagues from the places aforementioned or, if not explicitly aforementioned, comprehended by implication. —
Ashley Ward, The Great Arrogation
It will vey little astound the reader to be apprised of the intelligence that Montpelier became, as the result of being accorded this dignity, really quite giddy. In short order, a number of mountebanks and charlatans, chief among these being, inevitably, Mr Crass Cheseham, made it their business to “like really like fuckin’ like put like Montyfuckinpee like on like fuckin’ like the like fuckin’ like map, like I mean it’s like fuckin’ like fuckin’”. Mr Cheseham, drawing on his travels to various far-flung outposts of urban edginess - Goa & Varanasi & Berlin & etc - made it his particular business to effect the sought-for transformation of Montpelier by means of arranging for the spraying of its surfaces with acrylic paint. The spraying in question took the form of arts both literary and visual, and Montpelier in vey short order found itself festooned with a bewilderingly eclectic array of embonpoints and genitalia, indecipherable scrawls, inferior manga, exhortations to the proletariat to unchain themselves from their docile and ovine thraldom, excoriations of the zionist bankster lizard elite, valedictions addressed to lotophages terminally overwhelmed by their hobbies, odes to fermented apple-based beverages, and aesthetically challenging representational art. —
Mr Crass Cheseham
One notable source of opposition to the new social order has been a portly and resplendently grey-bearded gentleman-pervert, much resembling Karl Marx and publishing himself to the world as Mr Luvvertory. Mr Luvvertory is of that sadly misunderstood breed the male feminist, in which capacity he makes it his business to bring solace to womankind by means of the administration of creepy massage and simultaneous infusions of ketamine, to which purpose he has for several years maintained a studio deep within the warren of dusty and tenebrous chambers located up the escalier behind The Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, a cavernous drinking hole occupying former commercial premises in Stokes Croft. Mr Luvvertory harbours a particular animus against the burgeoning tribe of Cheseham acolytes, confessing himself deranged by their encroachments upon his space, and by the jangling cacophony with which they accompany their etching and spraying and stencilling. He most especially resents the impact which their arrival in such numbers has wrought upon the formerly nugatory rent he pays for his studio, which has risen inexorably to a level which he denounces to an impervious world as exorbitant and insupportable. Mr Luvvertory exorcises his animus by means of frequent visits to the Old Disgrace, during which he inveighs against his fellow perverts and anathematises the name of Cheseham, and urges that his grievances be carried unto the powers that be residing at College Green. —
Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, Mr Luvvertory, Ketamine
More of which anon. The social changes wrought upon Montpelier are comparatively public matters. And yet, and yet! The prophet saith that the personal is political, and most verily doth he say so. For if the Great Arrogation never had been I’ll wager you that Bristol never had been been graced with the presence of Dr Mark Wankstain putting himself forward in the Conservative interest for Montpelier, nor would Mr Crass Cheseham have become the drinking partner of a gentleman in the unique trade of supplying … er … interns to dignitaries of the left establishment. —
Dr Mark Wankstain, The Great Arrogation
It was moreover by a similar process that Mr Wankstain’s Bristolian sojourn became so inextricably linked with the decidedly alien existence of a somewhat angular - and, it must be confessed, socially maladroit - gentleman going by the name of Helix Folt. Mr Folt, an orphan of indeterminate provenance, despite his maturity clung most loyally to one Amelia De'Ath, the nanny of his childhood, to the extent that he had apparently spent his entire life in that respectable spinster’s studio apartment in Bath Buildings, making his bed upon her sofa. —
Bath Buildings, Helix Folt, Amelia De’Ath
Nanny and charge constitute, despite their intimacy, a peculiarly assorted pair. To her former charge, although like him thin and angular, in other ways Nanny De'Ath forms a vivid contrast. Her head is crowned with an outgrowth which, although it does not die back in the winter, changes with the seasons, being vernal in the spring, golden like corn in the summer, and taking on in the autumn the richer auburns and imperial purples of harvested bounty. I cannot truthfully state that her coiffeur assumes in winter the whiteness of snow’s mantle, for it does not, and why this should be is a matter concerning which I recuse myself from opining. It must be conceded that age has not been unkind to her. Now in her late sixties, she affects, and it must be acknowledged largely carries off, the dress and deportment of a lady two or three decades her junior, and is not infrequently to be seen sporting some exceptionally dashing black naugahyde leatherette trousers underneath a coyly bared midriff, from the omphalos whereof winks cubic zirconia. As to her outlook, well, there the difference between Ms. Amelia De'Ath and Mr Helix Folt is at its starkest, for Ms. De'Ath is given over to a florid and glorious irrationalism, manifested in a fixation with tarot, crystal balls, and the spirit world. To this purpose she once or twice a week betakes herself unto a rented parlour in Hotwells, where she supplements her retirement by charging thirty-five guineas per hour to other ladies of a certain age and surpassing credulous, to shuffle cards and peer at tea leaves and palms of hands, and to her clients deliver oracular pronouncements of a generality not likely to meet with ready refutation. To all of which Mr Helix Folt, whilom cocking an eyebrow, maintains a façade of studied and benign indifference; although it is another matter entirely whether or not his attitude would be similarly insouciant to her other sideline if he but knew of it, this involving some business with buckets in a lock-up in Snandrews. —
Amelia De’Ath
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