I am delighted to report that Sir Hearty Luncheon was not put to the necessity of making further excursions into the neighbourhood of … er … Squattocrat Towers. This will, I trust, be a matter of considerable solace to the reader, who is no doubt solicitous of the welfare of that great Curzon of the Mendips, for it would surely have stretched utterly beyond endurance his already finely-wrought and brittle facility of bearing cant. —
Squattocrat Towers, Sir Hearty Luncheon
In this instance, of course, the Deus ex Machina was, as a Boyle or a Paracelsus might have stated matters, chymical. For inasmuch as certain metals, when brought into conjunction with water, will corrode; and inasmuch as certain of the drums which St Just had with him up there on the roof of … er … Squattocrat Towers were constructed of certain of the corroding metals just alluded to; and inasmuch as in late November a cold and greasy precipitation drenched Bristol, and set St Just, that Proudhon of Stokes Croft, a-shiver under the paltry sheets of cardboard which were his only prophylactic against the notorious inclemencies of Our climate; and inasmuch as the aforementioned drums constructed of corroding metals were by this means brought into conjunction with water; marry they corroded, and this did cause effluxions and seepages of the vilest liquids which, seeking their lowest point as liquids ineluctably must, ran together and commingled in the gutters and the pipes of the Snatch family seat. And sundry of these liquids did most violently object to being brought into communion with one another; and while there was no great éclat of the nature of that which had overwhelmed Beggarswell Close in Little Mogadishu, yet was there a great conflagration, which in a matter of hours entirely razed to the ground the palatial residence of Lord Snatch. —
Lord Snatch, Drums, Bristol, St Just
It is not to be imagined that this was too much of a human tragedy. There was no loss of life whatsoever, for Lord and Lady Snatch, and also Mr Francis MacMahon - who was with that happy couple in virtue of keeping yet his close vigil over the convalescence of Her Ladyship - had ample warning of the conflagration, and were able to make good their escape in a most orderly fashion via the front door; while for his part, St Just was plucked from the roof-top by the bacon’s cherry-picker. Nor did pecuniary disaster fall too heavily upon their necks, for Lord and Lady Snatch - the latter by now tolerably recovered from the injuries she had sustained in Beggarswell Close - straightaway put on their compensation faces, and posed for the snappers of the Evening Post, and by this means won from the public coffers a not inconsiderable sum, although a considerable portion thereof was very promptly abstracted by Mr Francis MacMahon as his due for —
Francis MacMahon, Lady Kelly Snatch
The destruction of … er … Squattocrat Towers was furthermore a matter of no little serendipity from the perspective of those interests - chiefly Lord Handjob, Sir Hearty Luncheon and the Agua Caliente tribe of Riverside County California, but also Mr Don Quicksotte, and Miss Minerva Ledwitch - for whom the persistence of that edifice had represented nothing more than an obstacle in the way of the boring of wells on which the successful outcome of the Monchild-Rothsanto project depended. —
Monchild-Rothsanto project
At all events, the conflagration which devoured … er … Squattocrat Towers was the signal for the horny-handed sons of toil to summon anew the very same engines of destruction which had previously been deployed in the razing of Penistone House. For the second time, the dreamy languor of Stokes Croft was rent by the din of jack-hammers, and the clangour of metal teeth. For the second time, gentlemen in hi-viz jackets patronised Bar Wanque, and sat at the table set aside for non-hipsters, and ordered cardiovascular doom from the special menu for non-hipsters, and spat and wiped their noses with their sleeves, and filled the air with the foulest epithets, palely imitated and leavened with ‘likes’ by the disgusting bohemians sitting at the deliberately rickety tables set aside for hipsters. —
Bar Wanque
This site would like to use cookies to count visits and measure advertising. Nothing is set unless you accept.
