Bristol’s resident Ozymandias is personified in the form of Squalor. This gentleman is theorised in some academically not unrespectable quarters as a (grossly) decadent descendant of the ur-deity Skǖǚllǚǖ, which functions as the chaotic antithesis of the organising principle Llog in the Brislington Book of the Brute. Whatever the truth of the matter, Squalor is by comparison to his peers an easygoing fellow. There is no permanent shrine to him as such, for his church is to be found wherever he is. To this purpose, enthroned on and taking his ease in a supermarket trolley, thus is he wheeled about hither and thither by his hierophants. These holy unredeemable wretches supervise the erection unto his glory of ephemeral shrines - great tottering ziggurats of mildewed cardboard and crushed cans, against which is piled all manner of liquescent and noisome trash, which like the great dunes in the desert is subject to the caprices of zephyrs, and on this account gradually changes over time, sometimes petrifying into gnarled and abhorrent shapes, at other times liquefying and flowing hither and thither in those great tsunamis of toxic sludge which are among the veritable wonders of the age.
The genius loci himself is a quotidian presence in our town, and is at all times to be espied either insensible in his trolley, or reeling about all bemerded and festooned with cans, from which he frequently drinks. This agreeable gentleman makes no objection to being propitiated if it’s rilly not too much trouble, but is not at all particular as to the precise details. Gore is perfectly welcome of course, but so equally are the several other fluids, colloids, cheeses, stools, pukes, the several modes of ethanol, micturitions, and other essences, which go into and come out of that mighty engine, man.
Most wisely and truly is it said that those upon whom Squalor visits his benediction never ultimately profit by it. And this immutable, adamantine, definitional, iron law of nature admits of no exception in the petty case of Ms. Minerva Ledwitch. This afternoon finds this irreproachable matron taking her repose in the domestic Charybdis which, ever egregiously in want of a clean, has bubbled away these numberless years in the back garden of the bungalow in Mangotsfield. Reclining with what grace she can muster amidst the mineral deposits and the algae and the slime, Ms. Minerva Ledwitch assembles and with some deftness maintains upon her head’s frontispiece the several elements of maxillo-facial muscle operation which, when correctly concatenated, convey to the observer a sublime contentment on the part of the observed subject. It scarcely bears remarking that the effect in the present case is supremely horrifying.
The bungalow’s backdoor opens now, and extrudes Mr Don Quicksotte, who commences a furtive sort of scuttling across the lawn to his shed. Drawing level with Charybdis he looks up and, in the act of assembling his own features into his signature watery smile, is turned to stone by the rictus on the Ledwitch face.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going into your shed for,” says sharply that excellent gorgon, without the least alteration to her expression, “the moment you sit down, pound to a penny Cheseham will come to the front door, and you will have to get up and go all the way back through the house.”
“I know dear,” gabbles the booster of wind, “I just thought, you know, the windmill I promised the Inhalis is at rather a critical stage in its assembly, and I rather thought, you know, just snatch a few secs to …”
“I cannot be expected,” says Ms. Minerva Ledwitch with majestic finality, “to traipse through the vestibule in the nude.”
“No dear, of course not.”
Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, not to be deterred, elaborates upon this new theme
“I do sometimes speculate,” says she, “I do sometimes speculate, Quicksotte, as to whether the explanation for your pusillanimity may not be found in Candaulism.”
“Why no indeed dear,” says Quicksotte blinking rapidly, “it is only the Inhalis’ windmill you know, I …”
“Ghastly old pervert,” thunders Ms. Minerva Ledwitch, lifting her form sufficient to expose above the turbid waters a singularly majestic bosom, “go,” saith she pointing a weed-bedecked arm, “go back within and attend by the front door.”
The Aeolus of Mangotsfield smiles then his forlorn, wretched smile and, sighing, about-faces and betakes himself back within the bungalow. This outcome appears to satisfy the Crews Hole Pegaea who, resuming her ecstatic attitude, subsides once more into the moiling turbidity, suffering the mammalian protuberances aforementioned to dance like clashing rocks.
