"Robert Rankin - Waiting for Godalming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

egalitarianism made flesh. Here was a classless society. Here all
men were equal beneath the barber's brush.

A mile due north of Brentford, as the fair griffin flies, the Ealing
Road enters South Ealing and for a space of one hundred yards
becomes its high street. And here, in the high street, hard upon
the left hand path, betwixt a wool shop, where the wives of
wealthy men felt yarn, and a flower shop where they fondled
floral fripperies, there stood at the time when our tale is told, a
barber's shop that went by the name of Stravino's.
And Stravino's was a barber's shop as a barber's shop should be.
Above the door and rising proud as a porn star's pecker, the red
and white striped pole, encased within a cylinder of glass and
powered by an unseen engine, spiralled ever towards infinity. The
front and only window, bathed on rare occasions by bob-a-
jobbing Boy Scouts, displayed in ten-by-eights of gloss-gone
monochrome the fashionable haircuts of a bygone day. The face
of King Gillette, creator of that famous blade of blue, stared
sternly from a box of safety razors. And dead flies, belly up,
arrayed themselves in pleasing compositions.
Bliss.
Ah, perfect bliss.
But if 'twere bliss to view it from without, then what of it within?
Ah, well, within.
'Twere poetry within.
For

Stravino's shop was long and low
With walls of a nicotine hue.
The floor was ankle-deep in hair
And if you dared to stand and stare,
That hair would soon be round your leg
And filling up your shoe.
The Greek himself was a colourful man
Who rejoiced in the name of Smiling Stan
And worked his trade with great щlan
And sang some opera too.
 There were hot towels in a chromium drum
And a row of cinema chairs
Where the patrons sat to await their turns
And savour the screams from the hot towel burns
And open the old brown envelope
And dodge the flying hairs.
For the Greek could snip with incredible zest
He'd have at your head like a man possessed
And few could help but be impressed
By his knowledge of cosmic affairs.

And so on and so forth for many verses more. But we have not
come here to versify. We have come here with a purpose and