Praefectus Urbanus Manu Mercurii Epistolam Accipit – Pretty Poli

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Without, the rain had briefly abated. Across the road on Turbo Island, a line of topers with red faces, swigging variously from cans or plastic bottles, turned heliotropically towards the meagre rays slanting in declivity overhead. The two birds sought out Hieronymus among these recumbent saints, whom the smaller of the two now addressed. — Hieronymus, Turbo Island, Ashley Road

“Mama would like you to take this note, when we be gone from here, to that Mayor cove who is holding court in the Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island. I have taken the liberty of adding a little bounty, in the fond hope that it will assist you in pursuing your smoking hobby.” — Ghastly Hipster opposite Turbo Island

Hieronymus the juggler with alacrity made his way into the Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island, and through the foule of dank and sweaty eponyms combling that hall, to where the barons at their high table continued their carousel. Scoping Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet at the table’s end attempting to placate a visibly seething Mr Crass Cheseham, he limped to a place just behind that parrot’s chair, and slipped the billet under his wing, and made good his exit without giving Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet the opportunity to question him as to the note’s provenance. — Mr Crass Cheseham, Hawksmoor Perroquet

Mr Crass Cheseham had been most bitterly inveighing against the proposal to demolish … er … Squattocrat Towers. Like what was this like faceless fuckin’ Monchild-Rothsanto Partnership, incorporated under like the like law of like Agua fuckin’ Caliente in like Riverside County California? Like fuckin’ who were like the like faces behind this like well boring subterfuge, who just wanted to put like fuckin’ ordinary decent ket-head spraycan artists - the beneficiaries of Mr Crass Cheseham’s patronage and the bondsmen in his empire of self-regard - out of their rent-free home and party-house? Cui bono? Like follow the money! And here Mr Crass Cheseham raised a hand, the thumb and forefinger of which he set to rubbing together in a manner which quite clinched the argument, whereat Sir Hearty Luncheon permitted the most refrigerated smile to animate his facial permafrost. — Squattocrat Towers

We must not suppose Mr Crass Cheseham to have been alone in his antipathy towards the Monchild-Rothsanto scheme. For Dr Mark Wankstain also harboured certain scruples relating to the proposed demolition of … er … Squattocrat Towers, this latter gentleman giving no little credence to the amorphous hypothesis that the effects of the … er … Squattocrat clearance would somehow play themselves out in the compromising of his own alternative bohemian sustainable organic conception of the municipal identity. Withal, Dr Mark Wankstain was not quite as given over, as was his colleague the soi-disant plenipotentiary of two popular democracies, to soul-corroding rhetoric about faceless corporations and public school banksters, but rather confined himself to modifying the yeahyeahyeahyeah’s with which he was accustomed to greeting all the edicts and pronouncements propagated within and emerging from the Mayoral and Consiliar offices. — Dr Mark Wankstain

After looking hither and thither for some minutes and quite straining those beady eyes of his, Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet eventually discerned Hieronymus’s receding back as he hastened as fast as his lameness would allow him up Stokes Croft towards the traffic lights, where he promptly turned right into Ashley Road. Seeing this, the Mayor tarried not, but promptly followed that gentleman of the road who had been the Hermes in the case. — Stokes Croft, Ashley Road

The Mayor, as pursuing Hieronymus he skipped up Stokes Croft, was by a pair of eyes in his turn watched. The eyes in question belonged to the aforementioned rook or crow. This winged cove, espying the red flash of the receding hindquarters of the Mayor, left off his parliament, and addressed with somewhat of a Caledonian burr the fool nearest him, who happened to be Solomon, this latter sapient having resumed his wonted place upon that bench of honourable members. — Solomon, Stokes Croft

“’Tis our Mayor,” said Solomon, “hif that be what ye mean by zuch zircumlocutions.” — Solomon