Lady Snatch in spite of her elevation was singularly devoid of airs and graces, and entertained no scruples with respect to welcoming all and sundry to her place of business in Beggarswell Close, Little Mogadishu. Her charity extended even, that is to say most especially, to those adherents of the Eglise de la Bouteille, who made it their practice to congregate upon Turbo Island opposite the Ghastly Hipster Opposite Turbo Island. Lady Snatch maintained her cultural salon principally on those days when business was slow, these being increasingly frequent of late, inasmuch as the pugilistic insults wrought upon her person by Mr Francis MacMahon, with the passive connivance of her spouse, had tended somewhat to deter her normal clientele of tired businessmen and randy Lascars from beating a path to her door. —
Beggarswell Close, Turbo Island, Little Mogadishu, Eglise de la Bouteille, Lady Kelly Snatch
For these reasons it is small wonder that, upon a late afternoon approaching midsummer, the toper Solomon was to be espied in company with the harlequin Hieronymus sloping hangdog through Little Mogadishu Gate. Their passing was observed by a small knot of black-shrouded Somali womenfolk, who instinctively shielded their infants from those ne’er-do-wells and shrank from their presence. There was at that very moment a sudden froideur, and a biting wind whipped up the cardboard detritus from the gutters, and sent the empty cider cans rattling across the pavements, and sooth it was very much as though the plague Meltemi blew then through that dismal place. Solomon and Hieronymus, shivering both and wretched, slunk through the front gate of Lady Snatch’s castle, and over a front lawn, the sparsely-grassed nature of which had been thoughtfully compensated for by the planting of cans, bottles, cardboard, dirty nappies and other hardy perennials. Rapped they both with fists upon the mighty plastic door of that motley bail hostel. This after some minutes being grudgingly nudged ajar from within by Lady Snatch’s wordless concierge, toper and harlequin inserted themselves slotwise. —
Solomon, Hieronymus, Munter’s Blinding Cider
Now looking about themselves in the gloom of that chamber, the curtains whereof being eternally drawn, they found themselves to be in the company of two witches or mythical sisters, also perched atop chemical drums, these being none other than the Infirmary Lady and Medusa, the Gorgon guardian of Club Autonomie, the former stolidly listening whilom the latter did inveigh most bitterly against the pharmaceutical undertakings of Mr Francis MacMahon et al. —
The Infirmary Lady, Medusa
There ensued as they dranque their Munter’s Blinding Cider and their Special Brew a period of silence, which discombobulated those normally voluble folk. It seemed much as if the miasma from the mushroom cloud would not ever dissipate, but settled over the gathering and loitered nefariously about orifices and pores and bronchioles, and clogged up thoughts and the apertures by which thoughts were vented. Eventually, some throats were quite forcibly cleared, and the voices returned after a desultory fashion. Solomon complained of a headache from haspirating all this zulfur and brimstone, whereupon Hieronymus wondered aloud whether he really was being turned to stone, whether brim or soap or for that matter lime. Lady Snatch averred that she couldn’t say as she would have noticed. Meanwhile, Medusa griped peevishly at the insult to her dignity, and the Infirmary Lady, who seemed to be the only one unaffected by the fall-out, nodded sagely, and looked around the pharmaceutical stuff in the room, and seemed to be reckoning up how much of it might eventually wind up as jingly-jangly or - even better - folding paper stuff in her own pocket. —
Munter’s Blinding Cider
After some twenty minutes of this carousal, the Munter’s Blinding Cider began to work its inexorable magic; most especially upon the wizard Solomon, inasmuch as he was in the company there present the individual most partial to that particular source of refreshment. —
Munter’s Blinding Cider
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