Up from the cellar depth to shimmering Victorian avenues, murk jewelled with phosphorus, ambiguous dusk, the Eastern steams and perfumes of a street bazaar.
The city's pleasure hill, its Venus mound, venue for lost weekends, atilt over the sexual edge, gin-blur and brothel frenzy, an erogenous zone shades into the Twilight Zone.
Old smokes linger. 1381, Peasants' Revolt. St John's Priory at Highbury, home of Robert Hale, who raised the Poll Tax, is burned down, a blood and torchlight drama.
Rising from the priory's ash, the Highbury Barn, a tavern in five-acre grounds with bowling greens and trap-ball alleys; haunt for Walter Raleigh, for Oliver Goldsmith on his walks to Islington. In 1861 a defrocked clown, Giovanelli, buys the barn, imports a freak show, builds the Alexandra Theatre, and crams the fog with lamps and voices.
Giovanelli launches eel-pie fairs, sewer scampi served en croute, rat-killing contests, ballrooms, and the magical perfume of quim upon the breeze.
A million lights.
His freak show opens 1869. The city's dreams and visions are precipitated in an eerie haze.
Namatar the Man-Frog in his grotto, hyperthyroid eyes upon the women, spawning ritual. He spots the most susceptible, flushed in this chilly hall of monsters.
Scampi is a type of edible lobster – also known as langoustines or Norway lobsters, and defined in Briitsh law as  Nephrops norvegicus  – has long been an English (and later UK) pub snack, served battered and breaded. Packets of scampi-flavoured snacks are also a common sight in many British pubs. 
 
 In this track, the “sewer scampi” are the eels being served up in pies – “en croute” meaning in a pastry crust. Moore is jokingly trying to oversell the eels, which could (and still can) be caught in the Thames River, which at that point was still a receptacle for human sewage, as Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers (as covered in “ A Skeleton Horse ”)  were only a couple of years into construction. 
 “Quim” is an old-fashioned word for pussy, basically. Eel isn’t the only thing on the menu at the Highbury Barn.