The Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island was - in unimpeachably Euclidean compliance with the implications of its proximity to the isthmus in question - a twenty second flit across the road from the Fascist Dictatorship of Stokes Croft. The proprietor of the latter establishment, Mr Crass Cheseham, finding congenial the weirdness of the prevailing culture of the former establishment, preferred as a rule to take his refreshments within its portals rather than within those of the Bellend just around the corner, where the company tended to take its topers as it found them and therefore did not appreciate his particular brand of crotte de toreau. —
Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island, Stokes Croft, Mr Crass Cheseham
The true weirdness of the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island derived from the role it played in the social stratification of the Bristolian left. Whereas watering holes such as the Bellend and the Old Disgrace were the resorts of the dirtier, more scrofulous, straightforwardly disgusting hard left bottom-feeder, popular with thugs like Old MacDonald and Chris Skeletor, as well as with perverts like Mr Roger Buggery and Mr Luvvertory; in contrast, the Ghastly Hipster tended to attract a decidedly more etiolated, not to say wanky, clientele. Bluebloods such as Mr Tad Curmudgeonly and Mr Milton Djugashvili and Sir Gerald and Lady Inhali patronised the establishment, and Mr Don Quicksotte was not infrequently to be found there, performing his imbecile and cringeworthy toy windmill boosterism amid the floating jetsam of Tarquins and Henriettas, the eschewers of the glottal stop and the cleavers to the green. —
Mr Tad Curmudgeonly
It might vey well be inferred from the foregoing clarifications, that Mr Crass Cheseham would have felt himself a fish out of water in the Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island. But this would be to reckon without the inclusivity ethos of the establishment, which its denizens interpreted as enjoining them to make a pet of the occasional salt-of-the-earth type who wandered in off the street. The alert reader will have deduced that this benefice also extended to Mince, from earlier disclosures relating how his handsyness was indulged to the extent that he had some time previously been granted the sinecure of Octopus in Residence. Much as he enjoyed the liberalities of his sinecure and the freedom it granted him as a handsy person to fondle the younger and more pliant sort of Tarquin and Henrietta, Mince had found himself impelled to acknowledge that his sinecure was also sine that most essential of perquisites, viz. moolah. For a while, he had assayed to parlay, that is to say weaponise, his handsyness into a source of revenue, by aping his confederate Mr Luvvertory in the provision of creepy massage. Alas, his handsyness notwithstanding, Mince found the work not entirely to his taste, in part because Mr Luvvertory was vey little restrained in the expression of his (Mr Luvvertory’s confected resentment of the resulting diminution of trade (expressed by that gentleman in terms of his not vuckin zdandin vor avin moy vuckin doughs vuckin drodden on,) but mainly because he (Mince) found his (Mince’s) clientele increasingly to be composed of the older and more peremptorily demanding sort of female, and indeed the older and exceedingly gnarled sort of male. He had therefore sought to mitigate his growing indigence by dint of seeking employment in what was at that time Bristol’s principal growth industry (besides venery), namely the desecration of surfaces with graffiti and bill-sticking. As he found, however, the earning of his crust in graffiti and bill-sticking was not a simple matter either, inasmuch as Stokes Croft was no country for old men such as he. Youth has sharp elbows, and Mr Crass Cheseham, in whose gift the industry substantially was - pace Dr Mark Wankstain - had no policy of veneration for age. —
Mince
Mr Tad Curmudgeonly betook himself, his poster case and bucket, and his fucking organic fucking fennel and nux fucking vomica fucking gluten-free fucking tea with fucking organic fucking soymilk, over to the formica table at which a seated Mince was fondling the slightly raddled 40-something yoga-hobbyist writhing kittenishly upon his lap. —
Bucket, Poster case
Outside, night was falling or, this being Stokes Croft, collapsing in the gutter. The ill-assorted pair made their way along the pavement to the junction with Ashley Road, and thence down Picton Street. A few yards along this most elegant and refined of thoroughfares, Mince halted. —
Picton Street
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