Arriving at that sumptuous palace, he swept in very grandly by the great front doors. The braided flunkies lolling just inside the entrance snapped to attention, the greasiness whereof, Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet was very pleased to note in passing, served to lubricate the tracks on which trundled his amour de soi as well as, he rather thought, burnishing the armour of his resolve for the approaching denouement. —
Hawksmoor Perroquet
Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet, for all that he was feted in hipster circles as the great tropical species architect of the designer bars frequented by that quasi masonic fraternity, withal never felt comfortable in the company of those twerps, being always fearful lest the dammed up magma of his disdain might breach the crust of discretion in which it had for so long bubbled and seethed. For this reason, he had never once trod the linoleum paths and by-ways leading to Dr Mark Wankstain’s place of toil. This, as he now discovered from the map in the back of the Staff Handbook, occupied a suite, that is to say an antechamber and an inner sanctum, somewhere just under the eaves of the great edifice in which his multitude of minions swinked. Making his way thither he found, at the end of a musty corridor, an oak veneer door, onto which some vandal had etched, in some infinitely irritating hipster font, the legend —
Dr Mark Wankstain, City Hall
Ms. Hawksmoor Perroquet hopped over the threshold, and found himself in a sort of cave which had evidently undergone several transformations during its history. Although a small velux window, set into the sloping angle of the roof, afforded a meagre aspect of some brown and scudding cloudscape, this in itself paltry intimation of the great outdoors was in any case belied by the cobwebby mustiness that clung about the premises - the tiny portion of Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet’s soul that was not subsumed by rage fancied this to be a relic of earlier function as attic repository. The official role of the place as an office had latterly undergone a gradual usurpation; for, besides a couple of token filing cabinets and the desk at which Ms. Gamina Dročerpyatova yawned and painted her nails and socially networked, there was no furniture, the floor being bestrewn with bicycle parts and coffee-making machinery and other hipster detritus. There was another door, leading evidently to the inner sanctum or holy of holies - further idiotic hipster typescript gave indications to this effect. Ms. Gamina Dročerpyatova filleted from her crotch a bunch of keys, and with naked legs stepped over Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet and unlocked and, with another grunt, shoved open this second door. —
The inner sanctum
Mr Hawksmoor Perroquet, his heart thumping in his beak, hopped for the second time over the threshold. The inner sanctum of Dr Mark Wankstain was now disclosed as containing, very little to the Mayor’s wonderment, many of the appurtenances of the antechamber in which Ms. Gamina Dročerpyatova carried on her business, although with the addition of a bar football apparatus and a couple of condom vending machines, in relation to which Ms. Gamina Dročerpyatova said very helpfully —
The antechamber
“Ah hev to seh,” said Mr Ian Corby at last, “that ah hev bin scunnered the last few dees. Thee canna discuss aught wi’ yon cankert Russkie nor nae mare wi’ yon doctor fella as bought me frae Mayster Francis up yonder in Montypelly.” —
Ian Corby
“Aye,” said Mr Ian Corby with a note of regret in his cawing, “morayver, since mah sojourn wi’ these loony hipsters, who have taxed e’en mah famously sanguine an’ catholic neechurr, ah’ve no bin able to mek any heidway in relation to crystaw methodism.” —
Crystal methodism, Ian Corby
“They have tekken their roost,” croaked Mr Ian Corby, “in the Durrdon rookery, overluiking the kennel down below. Frae which, I assure ye,” he added, looking very sincere, “they hold themseffs vairy mich aloof, inasmuch as they are unimpeachabaw respectabaw creeters, and naw way minded to mix thessevs up in onny …” —
The Durrdon rookery
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