The next assizes were to be held at the Magistrates Court, conveniently located just up the road from the Bearpit, with Messrs Justices Shallow and Silent presiding. Mr Justice Shallow had by the quaffing of a great quantity of port rendered his complexion exceedingly florid, and had by the generous application of schoolroom chalk rendered his chin surpassing blue. Mr Justice Shallow having by the identical methods achieved a comparable floridness of complexion and blueness of chin, the pair sitting side by side beneath the portrait of Monsieur Foucault in his white rollneck exhibited a symmetry tending to the sublime at least as much as to the ridiculous, notwithstanding the adiposity and volubility of Mr Justice Shallow and the minceur and reserve of Mr Justice Silent. The radiators were on full blast and emitting a prodigious heat, and each of the two gentlemen of the Bench, when he put his hand to his chin to stroke it, displaced from the respective phrenological promontory great clouds of schoolroom chalk powder, which billowed bluely about the chamber as it became stuffier and stuffier and more and more emetic. And the chin of Mr Justice Shallow by dint of this procedure got mysteriously bluer, and the complexion of Mr Justice Silent got unmysteriously florider with the heat from the radiators and the filling of the chamber with the profanum vulgus. And the chin of Mr Justice Silent got mysteriously bluer, and the complexion of Mr Justice Shallow got unmysteriously florider with the filling of the chamber with the profanum vulgus and the heat from the radiators. And betimes Mr Justice Shallow demanded with exceeding volubility the rendering unto himself of further schoolroom chalk, and Mr Justice Silent would quite soon thereafter beg in tones of a becoming douceur that he might, saving that it were not too inconvenient, be favoured with the identical dispensation. —
Mr Justice Silent, The Bearpit, Mr Justice Shallow, Magistrates Court, Schoolroom chalk
The profanum vulgus as it crowded onto the benches at the rear of the court presented a spectacle somewhat less dignified than that of the florid and blue-chinned Justices, and even less dignified than the nasty seedy little men appearing respectively for the prosecution and the defence. This was in large measure due to the proximity and diplomatic protocols of the Bearpit, the eglise de la bouteille quartered in that precinct having always and unfailingly had any number of emissaries in attendance at legal proceedings of a summary nature, whether summonsed thither as defendants or, as was almost as often the case, purposing to bear indignant temoignage. —
Profanum vulgus
At length, the several previous cases having been disposed of or merely adjourned, the case of Mr Helix Folt was called, and an expectant hush fell over the crowd as the gentleman in question was led into the dock between a pair of generously upholstered and exceedingly complacent beadles. Mr Helix Folt had thankfully been suffered to doff the denims and the nylon and the nameless slip-ons, and was once more resplendent in his immaculately pressed double-breasted suit, his polished and buffed black lace-ups, his stripy shirt and his discreetly polka-dotted tie and cufflinks. —
Helix Folt
The case had now reached the point at which the prosecution produced its main witnesses, namely Officer Penis and the Constable in the pink tutu, who gave they/them’s name as Wifebeating-Cokehead. Officer Penis wasted no time in detailing precisely and at considerable length how they/them had been erased, misgendered, and micro-aggressed against by the horrifically white privileged middle class cunt, and had been the victims of unconscious bias and intersectional oppression on the part of the utter banker. Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead proved equally prolix, favouring the court with any number of different formulations of the thesis that, having been summoned to a premises in Mangotsfield, they/them had located Officer Penis at the premises in question, in a state of incapacitation owing the abuse to which they/them (Officer Penis) had been subjected by the defendant, whereupon they/them (Constable Wifebeating-Cokehead) had apprehended the person on a charge of misgendering a hofficer in the hexecution of they/them’s duty. —
Officer Penis
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