Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet the Mayor, covertly pursuing Hieronymus the toper of methylated cider, turned right from Stokes Croft into Ashley Road, advanced then a few yards, and very smartly scoped his quarry on the left, proceeding down Picton Street with a celerity which might have been considered rather to belie his apparent lameness. Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet, who very much wished to keep that fermented apple enthusiast in view, was now surpassingly vexed to be waylaid by an individual sidling out of the Siddhartha Yoga hovel. —
Hieronymus, Ashley Road, Siddhartha Yoga hovel, Hawksmoor Perroquet, Picton Street
Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet recognised 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. —
Club Autonomie, Medusa
He cast a weather eye down the street, and was not displeased to see that Hieronymus had stopped and accosted some tourists in order to display his grimy juggler’s balls. Realising that she was not being attended to, the anarchist harridan came closer, and … er … squatted down in a most unseemly fashion, and spoke again. —
juggler’s balls
“Look,” said Medusa the gorgon, “oy bint no hoil painting right, yet marry, a million flowers may bloom in the mud. Us hortonomes turns our ’ands betimes to shimmical himportations. Oy’ll not go hinto details hif ’tis hall the zame, but hit giveth han hindividdle that lift, and ’elps hus to vinance the revolution, so ’tis all good, and eke entirely non-’irarchical, hand hinvolveth no vorming powder votsoever.” —
hortonomes
Thus hag-ridden, Hawksmoor pursued the shadow of his quarry, hurrying on down Picton Street, across the paved area at the bottom, past the drinqueurs and junquies and craque-fumeurs loitering outside the pharmacy there. Turning the corner and heading right up Snandrews Road, he saw Hieronymus making heavy weather of his passage up the hill, and followed that juggler as he executed a sharp left into Montpelier Park. Wherein Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet came upon Hieronymus engaging in a pharmaceutical transaction with those very popular and fraternal tribunes Caius and Tiberius Craquus. Not wishing to intrude upon these sensitive proceedings, the Mayor took wing, and soared heavenwards and perched upon a branch of a tree overlooking that glade. —
Snandrews Road, Caius and Tiberius Craquus, Montpelier
“oy zincerely do not know,” gasped Hieronymus, “like it put in an appearance at my place of like business on Turbo Island, in company with like a budgergger,” and then added, quite helpfully, “vor whom it zeemed to all of us halkies to be hacting in zum kind of like hagency capacity. Unaccountably familiar that one, that budgie, howsomever oy ’ave like drunk too much vuckin’ Munters Blinding Zider vor like hinspectin’ volk to repose any like vuckin’ trust in my memory.” —
Turbo Island
Answering shrieks came to him from the gulls circling frenetically in the thermals rising from the industrial estate on Barton Hill. Two or three of these, intrigued by Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet’s varnished otherness, approached for closer inspection. Dirty creatures, the Mayor thought to himself, scavengers among putrefaction and decay, dwellers of outcrops and vertical surfaces. Troglodytes; must tell Services to paint their eggs. Somewhere, whence he knew not, he recalled a line, which he muttered to himself: —
Barton Hill
Sharp beaks too. Sensing now the imminence of insult unto the dignity of his office, and eke his person, Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet descended. Alighting some minutes later upon College Green, he scurried into a side entrance of City Hall, made straight for his office wherein he ensconced himself, leaving strict instructions that he was not to be disturbed. —
City Hall
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