At the head of King Street, at the Mercat Cross on Union Street, where several co-extensive granite buildings were built tomatch the grey tone, there is space to consider the forward thinking of our Enlightened C18th forebears, whose work we prize so much that it is still in daily use.

The greatest of these buildings, at the head of Union Street, is the Town House, which is shored to the sky, to be without doubt, the grandest sight for miles. It's here in the Townhouse where the knobs and spangles meet to celebrate whatever's new in Administrative Aberdeen, and most weeks there will be some event or other in the upper chambers which as the Provost's own showcase for his town, is without doubt, the nicest place in The City.

The City Chambers are likely the nicest place in all the North of Scotland and are civic red and plush, because it's here the Councillors receive the best of their public duties. It stands to reason that the Townhouse should be so grand, and so, from the soft corona of light about the chandelier, to the red pile carpet, the City Chambers as they are known, are the height of excellence …. and not just in décor, for there are Council waiters standing by, non-resistive with the treats, all of which have come from the Council kitchens don ih stair.

In between the basement and the City Chambers there is a food lift, a dumb-waiter, an ever open windpipe shooting skyward all that is ejected from the kitchen. Monster plates of pastries ascend from the kitchen in twenty seconds on the dumb-waiter, so upward is the food.

Behind the walls of the lower floors in the Town House pass these putties, and so the puffs and soft cake cases, wallowing in the upward rush of air, are transported from wall to wall, arrive still warm and at the relative density intended by the chefs.

It happens each week. The clerks on the lower floors are sat close to their computers, making coherence of the accounting, and knocking out a touch of desk-top publishing .... while shoots past, metres from their desks, the levitational foods for those using the best room in town: the Aberdeen City Chambers.